Vortrag
How Can Finance and Investment Support Ocean Health?
Mittwoch 19.06.2024, 18:00 - 19:30
A healthy ocean is essential to global well-being, biodiversity, and includes critical ecosystems underpinning all life on earth. Despite its values, the ocean is under immense pressure from human activities, threatening its ability to support human well-being, with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities. The majority of these pressures come from economic activities related to the ocean (“ocean economy”) such as fishing, aquaculture, coastal development, and shipping. Globally the ocean economy is worth over $4t AUD/yr and is expanding at twice the rate of the mainstream economy. At the same time, the gap in funding to protect and manage ocean health is at least $266b AUD/year and growing rapidly. Not only does this put the future of the ocean at risk, it also risks the entire global economy: over two-thirds of all publicly listed companies are at risk due to ocean decline. Investing a sustainable ocean economy (SOE) however can reduce economic losses by $8t AUD by 2037, yield six times more food and create 12 million new jobs by 2030. In a SOE, ocean health and ocean wealth are held in balance, and sufficient and durable finance for the management of ocean health is provided from the SOE. Despite clear evidence that achieving SOE will be better economically, ecologically and socially, market barriers hinder the transition. Key market barriers include inadequate policies, funding, capacities, and pipelines of investable SOE deals. This talk will dive into the global efforts to align capital flows with SDG 14.