Blue Finance

Finance for a sustainable and nature-positive blue economy

Healthy oceans are a powerful economic engine that supports the planet, people, prosperity, and peace. Today, however, our oceans are significantly undervalued.

The ocean or "blue" economy—sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystem— is conservatively estimated to be worth $24 trillion with annual benefits of around $2.5 trillion a year. Today, this enormous value is at risk due to years of mismanagement and ocean health decline. Trillions of dollars are invested in the blue economy today, and research shows that a business-as-usual trajectory entails great risk to our economies, with a cost potentially reaching up to $8.4 trillion over the next 15 years. That figure can be reduced by over half if the world adopts a sustainable development approach to the blue economy.

The “blue” economy is worth $24 trillion

A sustainable blue economy provides social and economic benefits for current and future generations; restores, protects, and maintains diverse and productive marine ecosystems; and preserves nature. If we are to achieve this vision for a healthy ocean and thriving blue economy, financial flows must be aligned and capital redirected toward sustainable investments. And we must find creative and collaborative ways to channel capital into the seascapes and coastal communities where it is most required.

The true potential of the blue economy can only be realized if our ocean’s health is secured through a nature-positive approach—one that replaces the idea of the managed decline of our natural world with one that taps into the potential of businesses to transform corporate stewardship with new modes of working to restore nature.

Our approach Engaging financial markets and deploying capital to strengthen the environmental, social, and economic resilience of the blue economy

Seafood traceability investor engagement

For investors in seafood companies, better understanding their portfolio companies' impacts and dependencies on nature, and mitigating their exposure to the associated financial risks, is mission critical. Full-chain traceability can help with this, and can also unlock a huge amount of opportunity.

To ensure that emerging seafood traceability commitments and systems are aligned with the best practice, the FAIRR Initiative, with support from WWF, UNEP FI’s Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), and Planet Tracker are bringing key seafood sector investors together to collaboratively engage in constructive dialogues with a core group of seafood companies.

In early 2024, 35 investors representing $6.5 trillion in combined assets signed on to the Seafood Traceability Engagement, and will be actively engaging with seven major seafood companies throughout the year. Phase 2 of the engagement will re-open for investor sign-on in early 2025.

For more information, please visit FAIRR's website.

WWF ’s blue finance team works with key finance sector actors to redirect capital away from destructive activities and towards those that offer sustainable outcomes, while also supporting the development of new innovative financial products that drive capital into building resilient coastal communities and seascapes, where it is needed the most. We work to align financial and corporate actions to address the most pressing environmental and social impacts of the seafood, marine renewable energy, shipping, and coast tourism sectors. We also work to ensure that we harness the power of financial markets to deploy sustainable financing mechanisms in the seascapes where they are needed most.

Finance sector transformation

WWF and partners are working to rethink the “business as usual” approach by catalyzing the redirection of mainstream finance into sustainable and restorative development pathways. Existing financial markets power the economic activities that make up the current blue economy and are already lending and investing trillions of dollars into ocean markets. The risks of business as usual need to be clearly understood by banks, investors, and insurers at a global, regional, and local level and operationalized in their business models so that they start to shift away from financing harmful activities and toward sustainable and resilient practices. WWF is also working to highlight the opportunities of a nature-positive ocean economy. WWF is working with the finance sector to ensure sustainable seafood markets for the future, and growing our programming in marine renewables, shipping, and coastal tourism sectors.

Innovative financial product design

WWF is working with financing partners to ideate and create opportunities to direct capital into place-based projects in our priority geographies that deliver nature-positive impacts across seascapes. Achieving nature-positive impacts that provide quantifiable benefits for ocean health, blue economy businesses, and communities requires thoughtful, sustained investment to pay for the costs of transition and align incentives with the sustainable development pathway. This requires that we move beyond a reliance on short-term philanthropic funding and create new, innovative approaches, that incorporate both public and private capital. Our work encompasses a range of different approaches, including establishing major funding mechanisms such as the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) approach and developing concepts for bespoke funds or insurance mechanisms that benefit particular habitats or coastal communities.

WWF believes that when the planet regains its natural strength and flourishes, people thrive, societies prosper, and the world is more peaceful. The private sector and financial institutions have an important role to play in our planet's future.