Science for a Nature Positive Future for the Ocean

The ocean is the original birthplace of life on Earth and provides humanity with immense traditional, cultural, and intrinsic value. Ocean ecosystems also significantly underpin the global economy: they are conservatively valued at US $24 trillion, and generate as much as US $2.5 trillion per year in goods and services. The ocean provides food for billions of people, serves as a buffer against climate change, is an efficient conduit for transportation, yields numerous sources of energy, and offers coastal protection from storms and floods, among other critical services.

But the ocean is under threat. Ocean biodiversity is in decline, including critical ecosystems like coral reefs, mangrove forests, kelp forests, salt marshes, and seagrass beds. The ocean economy is expected to double this decade, which, under a business-as-usual scenario, will contribute significantly to pressures on the ocean including overfishing, climate change, coastal development, pollution, and invasive species.

Some actions have been taken to protect, restore, and manage the ocean. These include the establishment of protected and conserved areas by governments and recent growth in nature-related frameworks and certifications by and for the private sector. Yet despite incremental progress, actions to protect and restore the ocean have been insufficient. Transformative, system-wide changes are needed to bend the curve for biodiversity from its ongoing decline to a positive trajectory.

To ensure a thriving ocean, the global community now recognizes the imperative of actions toward a nature-positive future, including as part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework which was signed by 196 governments.

Nature Positive is a global societal goal defined as ‘Halt and Reverse Nature Loss by 2030 on a 2020 baseline and achieve full recovery by 2050’.Global Goal for Nature

Graphic: Global Goal for Nature: Nature Positive by 2023

A nature-positive trajectory includes integrated actions that support biodiversity, climate, and people, for a thriving future on Earth.

Why we need a nature-positive future for the ocean

Reaching the nature-positive goal requires collective action by all actors—including governments, companies, financial institutions, NGOs, scientists, and communities—while centering equity and justice.

At WWF-US, we take a science-based approach to encourage credible contributions to a nature-positive future for the ocean. We develop, recommend, and assess tools, frameworks, guidances, and recommendations for companies, financial institutions, and policymakers. We convene and collaborate across disciplines and sectors, and ground-truth our recommendations with users to ensure both ambition and feasibility, increasing the likelihood that our recommendations are adopted.

Current projects

SBTN Ocean Hub

WWF-US is one of two co-leading organizations of the Science Based Targets Network’s Ocean Hub (alongside Conservation International), developing guidance for companies to set science-based targets for the ocean.

Science-based targets enable companies to take action and address their most pressing impacts on the ocean in their direct operations and upstream supply chains. They first assess their impacts in a location-specific manner and then prioritize where their cumulative impact is the greatest and where there is the greatest environmental urgency. They then publicly commit to the measurable objectives set out by our experts, based on the best available scientific evidence, and disclose on their progress as they work to meet the ambition of the targets developed by the SBTN Ocean Hub.

The SBTN Ocean Hub Version 1.0 Guidance is focused on targets for the seafood value chain, addressing the largest pressures from both the wild capture and aquaculture industries in the ocean to halt and reverse nature loss. Steering committee members include FishWise, Marine Stewardship Council, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, The Nature Conservancy, and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

The SBTN Ocean Hub V1.0 Guidance has three targets:

Target 1: Avoid and Reduce Overexploitation covers wild fisheries, helping companies avoid reliance on commodities derived from overexploited stocks and engage in seascapes and jurisdictions to improve fisheries conditions and reduce overfishing.
Target 2: Protect Structural Habitats covers aquaculture and wild fisheries, helping companies avoid and reduce impacts on structural habitats (e.g. coral reefs and seagrasses) in marine and transitional environments.
Target 3: Reduce Risks to Endangered, Threatened, and Protected Marine Wildlife covers wild fisheries, addressing impacts to endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) marine wildlife species from wild capture fishing by mitigating known risks from fishing strategies, locations, and spatiotemporal overlap with ETP marine wildlife.

SBTN Ocean Hub launched V1.0 Guidance for the Seafood Value Chain for companies to set science-based targets for the ocean in early 2025 (learn more here, including becoming one of the first companies to set seafood science-based targets). The Ocean Hub is looking to expand guidance for other sectors and pressures in V2.0.

Join the SBTN Ocean Hub as an Advisor (receive periodic updates and the opportunity to provide feedback) or a Stakeholder (receive periodic updates, e.g. mailing list), through the SBTN Ocean Hub page.

Towards Nature Positive for the Ocean

Pathways for corporate contributions

Read the Report

Nature Positive Ocean Pathways

WWF is developing recommendations to shape credible approaches to contribute to a nature-positive future for the ocean, providing action pathways complementary to existing frameworks like SBTN and TNFD, among others. To enable this, WWF is leading the development of Nature Positive Ocean Pathways, taking a cross-sectoral approach. The Pathways are primarily geared toward private sector audiences (companies and financial institutions) whose operations and investments affect the marine and coastal environment with a goal of accelerating adoption of business and financing models that advance credible contributions to a nature-positive future. They also link the pathways to existing key policies necessary to enable this vision.

The pathways focus on four key sectors critical to ocean health:

Offshore wind
Coastal and marine tourism
Fisheries
Wild capture fisheries and aquaculture

Version 1 - Towards Nature Positive for the Ocean: Pathways for Corporate Contributions

WWF’s report, Towards Nature Positive for the Ocean, provides a first-of-its-kind guide specifically designed to support companies operating in marine and coastal environments. It offers practical, science-based pathways to help businesses credibly contribute to the global nature-positive goal: halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieving full recovery by 2050.

Organized around the AR3T action framework—Avoid, Reduce, Restore & Regenerate, and Transform (aligned with SBTN)—the report outlines concrete steps companies can take to:

Avoid future negative impacts on marine ecosystems
Reduce unavoidable impacts
Restore and regenerate degraded habitats
Transform the broader systems and value chains in which they operate

Illustrative, evidence-based examples are included for each step in the AR3T action framework to provide companies with motivational yet achievable entry points to nature-positive contributions. These pathways serve to support industries in understanding the concepts, characteristics, and fundamentals of
actions that can contribute to nature-positive outcomes in their work.

Crucially, the report underscores that no single company or sector can achieve nature positive alone. The scale and interconnected nature of ocean impacts demands collective action within and across industries, and in coordination with governments, financial institutions, civil society, and local communities. Transformative change will only be possible through multi-actor collaboration and shared responsibility.

Version 2 - Nature Positive Ocean Pathways: Metrics (in development)

Measurement of changes in ocean health is critical for ensuring progress toward the nature positive goal. Pressures – like pollution and habitat loss – and the state of nature – like species diversity and stock health – are critical to measure to design effective and targeted responses and assess impact.

Following Version 1 and our recent ocean landscape analysis, this report will provide a detailed review of and guidance on available indicators, metrics, and datasets relevant to ocean health and the sustainable blue economy. Complementary to SBTN, this report will assess ocean pressures, responses, and state of nature metrics relevant to ocean biodiversity, with relevance to coastal communities and climate outcomes. It will also consider usability and applicability, highlighting case studies across sectors, and linking to the action pathways laid out in V1.

Engaging Key Players

Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) fluke with fishing boats in background. Andfjorden close to Andoya, Nordland, Northern Norway. January.

Oceans Markets

Tackling the triple planetary crisis facing biodiversity, our climate, and people is a collective and shared effort and urgent action is needed from the private sector to drive system-level transitions. It requires a new way of thinking for companies—to shift away from ‘business as usual’ to deliver credible contributions and solutions to the global societal goal of nature positive.

WWF engages key oceans markets impacting ocean health and resilience – offshore wind, coastal and marine tourism, shipping, and seafood – to shape scalable, durable, and global oceans solutions that are science-based and help support nature-positive outcomes. WWF works leading private sector actors to better address their environmental and social footprints, shift operational practices, establish long-term investments in the seascapes where they do business, and drive systemic transformations across sectors including in policy and finance.

Learn more

Common dolphin (Dephinus delphis) pod feeding on sardines (Sardinops oecllata) East London, South Africa.

Blue Finance

Finance Sector Transformation

According to UNEP, $7 trillion in annual financial flows have a direct negative impact on nature. Transforming financial markets is therefore mission critical. WWF is working with leading lenders, investors, and insurers to align their business practices with best-in-class scientific and data-driven approaches leading to nature-positive outcomes and a sustainable blue economy. Our blue finance work also aims to positively impact corporate behavior and the enabling environment, driving system-wide transformation.

Innovative Financial Product Design

There is an urgent need to develop new financing approaches for the oceans that can channel capital at speed and scale to support our priority seascapes in perpetuity. To succeed, we will need to blend philanthropic and public capital with private finance and link access to capital to the achievement of environmental and social performance indicators. WWF is exploring access to credit or insurance for ocean-dependent coastal communities, bond for nature and debt restructuring, and delivering large scale funding models such as Project Finance for Permanence.

Learn more

We are also proud to be a part of multi-sector initiatives to develop science and guide actions for nature, including: