An international report stressed the importance of blue finance to support the sustainability of marine life, beaches, and oceans.
Richard Attias Foundation issued a report on the need to engage the private finance, business, and investment community to protect the oceans and create a healthy future.
A significant milestone was reached two weeks ago when five key international institutions announced they would consolidate their efforts into a joint global guidance document to help with global market consistency and transparency.
An appreciable share of the ocean and water-related projects are currently included under the mantle of sustainable bonds.
It is also clear that an instrument tailored explicitly to deploying capital towards the blue economy will help accelerate and track investment while creating stronger linkages between investment and industry performance against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The founding president of the World Ocean Council, Paul Holthus, called for exploring how to mobilize private sector financing for the oceans.
The report indicated that just 1.6 percent of overseas development aid goes towards the 14th SDG life below water.
SDG 14 is also the least funded of all the SDGs, both from an ODA and philanthropic point of view.
“While the recent $1 billion pledge to scale up philanthropic funding for the oceans is a welcome boost, it will not be enough to mobilize the $175 billion we need annually to deliver on SDG 14.”
According to the report, blue bonds offer a promising avenue to close the financial gap.
Seychelles initiated these tools in 2018 as a sovereign blue bond to help direct capital towards protecting marine resources and developing the maritime economy.
Since then, they’ve been issued by corporate and multilateral issuers, from Bank of China’s $961 million blue bonds to finance marine-related projects to the Asian Development Bank’s $151 million bond as part of its $5 billion action plan for healthy oceans in the region.
The argument for blue finance is that projects that improve water resources' health and sustainability deliver substantial economic value, given the central place of water in the world economy and the livelihoods of millions.
“One marine protection scheme in Mexico’s Baja peninsula, for instance, led to a 400 percent increase in fish stocks within a decade, reversing the toll of decades of overfishing,” read the report.
Existing blue carbon solutions such as seaweed farming, kelp forest conservation, and mangrove restoration could help cut emissions by 0.4 to 1.2 GtCO2e per year, with emerging solutions adding up to another 1.8GtCO2e, for a total of 3GtCO2e, or nearly 10 percent of all global energy-related emissions in 2021.
The report noted that blue bonds had attracted less interest than other sustainable debt products such as green bonds.
“These enjoyed a 49 percent growth rate in annual issuance in the five years leading up to 2021, reaching $620 billion in 2021, and inspiring offshoots, like social impact or sustainability bonds.”
