Terrasse

牙买加金士顿时间7月22日，在国际海底管理局第30次年会上，我很荣幸能代表WWF团队发言。算下来，这是第一次在联合国机构的大会上发言。会前，我与同事们认真打磨了发言稿，既要展示我们的立场，为自然发声，也要避免冲突。因此我将深海采矿的风险与联合国可持续目标、昆明-蒙特利尔全球生物多样性框架、本地社区相结合，并声明科学基础和多边主义的价值。

On July 22nd, at the 30th Session of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, I was honored to speak on behalf of the WWF International. This was, in fact, my first time speaking at a United Nations agency conference. Before the session, my colleagues and I carefully refined the speech — aiming to clearly convey our position and speak up for nature, while also avoiding conflict. We therefore linked the risks of deep seabed mining with the SDGs, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and indigenous people, while emphasizing the importance of a science-based approach and the value of multilateralism.

The intervention was drafted and revised together with Jessica Battle and Kaja Fjærtoft, my colleagues. This is a true team work.

https://enb.iisd.org/international-seabed-authority-isa-council-30-2-23july2025

I attended the UNEP FI Regional Roundtable Asia Pacific 2025 in Suzhou and spoke as a panelist in the session on Advancing the Blue Economy in Asia Pacific.

Since this is a regional meeting, I did not mention too much about our work in China, but more on how we contributed to the development of the global sustainable blue economy trend, as well as our work in other regions like Southwest Indian Ocean.

My colleague Louise helped me much in selecting my key messages and explaining me the history.

The panel session was chaired by Romie Goedicke den Hertog, Co-Lead, Nature, UNEP FI. Here is what I mentioned.

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Question:
Sustainable blue economy. Introduce the framework of blue finance. Why is it important to marine industries and their investors?

I would like to introduce WWF’s philosophy of blue finance – blueing the finance system and financing blue. Blueing the finance systems refers to the development of methodologies and instruments for blue finance, while financing blue means pilot cases.

So from my perspective, this question is more about blueing the finance system.
1, As a conservation NGO, WWF used to explain the importance of ecosystem by portraying flagship species. Although that evokes sympathy, it is hard to translate into action, especially the actions from the drivers behind ecosystem degradation, I mean the human activities and the finance behind. Therefore, we evaluated the monetary value of ocean so that countries and regions can understand ocean from an economic perspective. A conservative estimation of the ocean assets is $24 trillion, which provides annual benefits of US$2.5 trillion, a 10% YoY return, higher than most investment portfolios. The annual production US$2.5 trillion also enables ocean to rank as the 7th economy in the world.

2, However, not many financiers are aware of the level of financing going into ocean-related businesses, nor whether this poses salient risks. In 2021, through an assessment of “value at risk”, WWF provided clear evidence that business-as-usual trajectory will likely lead to financial losses of US$ 8.4 trillion over the next 15 years. That is about 1/3 of the total ocean assets.

3, It is more concerning when we consider the levels of mainstream finance going into the global south, where dependency on the ocean and freshwater’s natural assets is high. To understand the finance flows into one of the most significant biodiversity hotspots in the global south – the Southwest Indian Ocean, a recent WWF report found that over US$ 20billion of credits and over US$7bn of investments are targeted at seafood, energy and maritime transport across the region; the majority of which is derived from the global north. However, after checking prominent FIs financing this region, we found that only a handful had policies in place to manage ESG risks relating to all blue economy sectors.
It is a pity that WWF has not done an Asia Pacific study, but we expect a similar situation based on earlier studies in this area.

4, This is why WWF has been actively supporting the UNEP FI in promoting Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles among the finance sector. Now the 88 members represent over US$11 trillion in AUM (assets under management).

Question:
How do WWF see the blue finance strategies to address interconnected impacts between nature and people?

From our perspective, this is financing blue, since these are financing activities on the ground. I would take the involvement of coastal communities as the most typical instance.

1, Coastal communities are a typical group of people that have a dual role in terms of coastal ecosystems. For these communities, the ecosystems are significant contributors to the local economy; at the same time, they also provide important functions in the restoration, protection, and sustainable management of coastal ecosystems.

2, However, the IFC estimates that 40% of formal Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises in developing countries have unmet financing needs. Therefore, it is crucial that the transition to a sustainable blue economy is delivered at all levels – ensuring that coastal communities are empowered to manage their natural resources and develop in ways that secure their long-term needs.

3, They face many barriers to getting finance, including the lack the appropriate deal size and risk-return ratios to match available capital. Because of that, they often face high transaction costs, low or slow return profiles. Due to their dispersed and fragmented nature, they have governance challenges and capacity challenges. This is common in global coastal communities, and Asia Pacific countries are of no exception.

4, Although people usually expect incubators and accelerators to support the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, WWF found that most still focused on high-growth sectors. Therefore, WWF started its attempt in Africa to develop a blue venture builder.

5, As is known to many people, WWF funded a number of conservation projects that involve improving community livelihood, so it was an excellent place to start testing whether there are opportunities to bridge the gap between grant-based projects to revenue revenue-generating, self-sustainable enterprises. The first step is to assess the pipeline of bankable projects, typically income-generating or cost-saving opportunities which create benefits for marine conservation and restoration, such as community ecotourism, mariculture (e.g. seaweed farming), small-scale fisheries, cold chain or supply chain development. All are pre-investment ready, requiring significant capacity building, technical support, and business planning.

6, We hope to support them to demonstrate returns and impact and thus they can attract commercial forms of investment. We are now testing this approach in Tanzania and Madagascar, with the aim of aggregating revenue streams from different sources and attracting finance at scale.

I believe, many of such successful cases can be good reference for Asia Pacific region.

On the World Environment Day 2025, I took a Podcast interview with Climate Watch programme in CGTN. Since the hot topic these days are the UNOC-3, the third United Nations Ocean Conference and this Podcast features climate, the perfect overlap goes to PLASTIC!

Here is the post aired.
https://radio.cgtn.com/podcast/news/5/Why-is-ending-plastic-pollution-crucial-to-tackling-climate-change/2715952

6月5日环境日，我和央视的CGTN做了一期播客，讨论了减少塑料污染对于减缓气候变化的作用。

On May 12th, I participated in a blue finance symposium held by AIIB and the Swedish Embassy. The chief economists of AIIB and ADB presented the trend in water-related finance mobilization. I participated in the panel on nature and finance. Dr. Guo Peiyuan chaired this session, and it is literally a “family” conversation for me.

Here are the questions and my answers.

1, Please introduce us the evolution of the global blue finance trend.

As is known to all, WWF is a conservation NGO, aspiring to conserve biodiversity throughout the world, including both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, our experience in the past decades taught us that although focusing on our beloved species will gain sympathy and support, it is not strong enough to change the drivers behind the environmental degradation. Therefore, as I just mentioned, WWF began to emphasize the monetary value of ecosystems in 2015.

In the same year, WWF launched the Principles for a Sustainable Blue Economy. I would spell out our definition here, very easy to remember, that’s sustainable, blue, and economy.
Sustainability means that the economy should provide social and economic benefits for current and future generations.
Blue means that the activities should restore, protect, and maintain diverse, productive, and resilient marine ecosystems.
Economy refers to the economy based on clean technologies, renewable energy, and circular material flows.

Based on the principles of SBE, WWF, together with other like-minded organizations like the European Investment Bank, declared the Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles in 2018. The fourteen principles were later hosted by UNEP, becoming the UNEP Finance Initiative. This is the first global framework to deliver guidance to both the private and public sector finance on ways towards a sustainable blue economy. We see this as a simple entry point for financial institutions. By joining the voluntary initiative, they will have access to a global community of practice, peer-to-peer learning, blue finance resources, and a knowledge base. Till now, five Chinese financial institutions have signed, and we encourage more to join in.

WWF was among the key NGOs pushing for nature-related financial disclosures even before TNFD’s launch in 2021. And we explored the value at risk in the global blue economy in 2021, finding that up to 66% of publicly listed companies are exposed to risks if the ocean is no longer healthy. Around US$8.4 trillion of assets and revenues are at risk in the coming 15 years, if business as usual.

Therefore, we can see that the notion of SBE has a quite clear evolution trend, identification of ocean assets, launch of the concept of sustainable blue economy, definition of financial principles for it, and then informing the risks and requirements to financial institutions. We feel fortunate to be a part of the trend of SBE. Now, like the meeting today, is a good opportunity to think about how to realize it.

2, Why should multilateral development banks and policy banks be aware of the ocean-related risks?

As some of you have heard many times, human beings benefit from marine ecosystems services, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services. These services have clear intrinsic value in supporting economy and society. In 2015, WWF began to assess the assets and flows of the monetary value provided by the ocean. In the report of Reviving the Ocean Economy, WWF evaluated the assets of the global ocean as 24 trillion USD, and annually it yields production worth 2.5 trillion USD. That is a 10% year-over-year return, more profitable than most investments. In 2022, applying the same methodology, we assessed the ocean in China as 54 trillion CNY.

So why should banks care about ocean? Well, marine economy rely on the ecosystem and cast impacts on it. Today’s environmental impacts are tomorrow’s financial risks, and it is clear that many of these impacts stem from or harm the health of the ocean. Ocean-related sectors have significant dependencies and impacts on nature in the ocean, such as seafood, shipping, ports, tourism, marine renewables, etc. As a result, the opportunities and risks associated with their development and contribution to economy and society should be considered relevant to the responsibilities and activities of policy banks in financial regulation for maintaining stability.

Let me give two examples. The first one is physical risk, usually straightforward. Let’s take an example. Fishery stock depletion can drive up prices for consumers, a form of ‘ecoflation’ that can reduce demand for seafood as stocks collapse. While this may incentivise catch reduction over time, this may not result in ecosystem recovery. Meanwhile, as seafood consumption is increasing due to growth in the middle class, notably in Asia, this form of inflationary pressure can drive consumers towards alternative sources of animal protein with higher carbon intensity and/or reduce household budgets, with knock-on effects on spending and saving.

Many of you are also familiar with transition risks. Blue economy transition risks are diverse and relate to the interventions made in markets and society to support the transition to sustainability. Let’s take regulatory risk in the transition risks as another example. Regulatory risk is prominent in cases where regulatory adjustments on sustainability may result in costs, including stranded assets, which are particularly relevant in the context of commodities and sectors with high capital costs. Shipping, recognised as a sector that’s challenging to decarbonise, may be especially exposed to regulatory risk on net zero. Just imagine when a strict net-zero requirement is imposed someday, the investment ends up with high-emission ships will eventually be stranded in the harbour.

3, How can International NGOs like WWF support multilateral development banks and investors to contribute to blue finance in China?

Different sectors have their ways of being engaged in the SBE?

1, for multilateral development banks like AIIB and also for policy banks.
In China, WWF has developed a China-specific “blue taxonomy” last year that can help both policy banks, like multilateral development banks and central banks, and investors find sustainable sectors to invest in. This comprehensive taxonomy entails 8 ocean-related sectors, including fishery, shipping, and marine engineering, marine renewable energy, etc. For each specific industrial sector, it explains the definition, climate change performance, potential risks, management policies, etc. It is in much detail. As it is developed using existing Chinese national standards, guidance, and policies like green bond, they are ready to be adapted in China policies. We will explore its application among policy banks, finance regulatory departments, investors, etc., as well as their local counterparts. 

Globally, WWF launches its annual report on the development of the Sustainable Financial Regulations and Central Bank Activities, assessing the integration of environmental & social considerations in regulatory and supervisory practices, as well as in central banking activities and other measures that support the redirection of financial flows towards more sustainable practices. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in.

2, for financial institutions and investors.
Since seafood is the most traditional and representative industrial sector in the ocean, WWF studied the baseline of seafood finance, finding that this sector is prone to policy influence, has significant conflict between supply and demand, and has limited integration of sustainability. WWF also identified and analyzed various sources of environmental risks within the seafood industry, ultimately inducing environment-related financial risks faced by financial institutions.

Meanwhile, WWF attempts to set up a sustainable fishery project inventory that financial institutions can directly choose projects to invest. It is still in progress. Since WWF is a conservation organization, our inventory is still too “natural” and not “financial” enough.