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.