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Scaling the Ocean Economy
Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance
Posted on Nov 14, 2025
Dive into the latest instalment of The Ocean Imperative, a thought leaders’ series covering ocean risk and resilience developed in partnership with ORRAA’s global lead insurance partner, AXA, and Project Syndicate.
HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, reflects on the Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF) and the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), held earlier this summer. Prince Albert II emphasises that ocean protection should not be seen as a charitable activity but recognised as an investment. This mindset shift is essential for driving coordinated, strategic action across the regenerative and sustainable blue economy, and a crucial message to keep in mind as conversations unfold at COP30 Brazil.
This article has been widely endorsed by 35 signatories including Pascal Lamy, Bernard Fautrier, Robert Calcagno, Olivier Wenden and many more.
The ocean is a critical ally in efforts to tackle climate change, ensure food security, and support livelihoods. But delivering the level of sustained, coordinated investment needed to harness its potential requires a strategic approach that leverages public and philanthropic capital to establish a pipeline of investable projects.
MONCACO – Two major events this summer – the Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF) in Monaco, and the third United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice – reflected the growing recognition that protecting the ocean is not only an environmental issue, but also a political, economic, financial, and social imperative. The challenge now is to translate this rapidly emerging consensus into concrete, sustained action.
Covering over two-thirds of our planet and accounting for 97% of its biosphere, the ocean is a critical ally in our efforts to tackle climate change, ensure food security, and support livelihoods. Without a healthy ocean, sustainable development will remain a distant dream. But protecting and restoring marine ecosystems costs money, and financial flows are falling far short of need. To close this gap, ocean protection must be regarded not as charity, but as an opportunity – a high-value investment in our collective future.
The vision of a thriving ocean economy that offers both short-term profit and long-term value in terms of food security, employment, and resilience galvanized the political leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, and representatives of multilateral organizations and civil society at the BEFF. The event delivered on its goal of unlocking funding for ocean-positive projects, including through innovative instruments like blue bonds and blended-finance vehicles, which combine public, private, and philanthropic resources. It thus represented an important first step toward anchoring ocean protection where it counts: within the financial industry.
But the new “blue” investment announced by public, private, and philanthropic actors at the BEFF – amounting to some €8.7 billion ($10.1 billion) – represents only a fraction of what is needed to meet global targets. Moreover, isolated commitments, however ambitious, do not necessarily lead to the sustained, coordinated investment that scaling the blue economy demands. A more strategic approach, which focuses on leveraging public and philanthropic capital to de-risk investment in ocean-positive projects and attract long-term private finance, is urgently needed.
Three imperatives stand out. The first is to create a robust pipeline of investable projects. As it stands, many promising initiatives remain stuck at the pilot stage. A lack of early-stage financing, technical assistance, or enabling policies means that they never get to a point where they are appealing to private investors.
Monaco is doing its part to bridge this gap. The ReOcean Fund – an ocean-focused private equity fund, co-managed by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation (of which I am president) and Monaco Asset Management – has raised $73 million to invest in companies pioneering technologies that promise to advance critical goals like restoring marine ecosystems and decarbonizing shipping. But the responsibility for sustaining a pipeline of bankable projects ultimately falls to governments and development banks, which must use public finance to redefine investment risk so that it reflects the real economic returns of protecting marine ecosystems.
The second imperative is to create enabling conditions for investment. If ocean-relevant sectors – such as shipping, fisheries, coastal infrastructure, and tourism – are to align their activities with the blue-economy vision, they must be guided (and constrained) by net-zero and nature-positive targets that are ambitious and credible. Governments must not only develop and enforce the right rules of the game, including regional marine spatial plans, but also lead by example. That means eliminating poorly designed and harmful government subsidies, such as those driving exploitation of overfished stocks, and using those public resources to finance ocean-positive projects and cover transition costs for ocean-dependent sectors. With WTO Agreement Fish 1 now in force, the world has taken a historic first step toward curbing illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing and protecting vulnerable stocks, while negotiations continue over Fish 2, which will tackle overfishing capacities.
Public development banks must also do their part to strengthen investor confidence and catalyze market-wide change. At the BEFF, more than 20 public development banks endorsed the Finance in Common Ocean Coalition joint statement, which articulated a collective ambition to scale up ocean finance, align portfolios with a regenerative and sustainable blue economy, and support pipeline development by sharing tools and methodologies. These institutions must follow through on these commitments, and their peers must join them.
Finally, financial flows throughout the economy must be aligned with climate, biodiversity, and equity goals. For governments, this means integrating environmental and social externalities into public budgets, with national accounting systems factoring in both the value of ecosystem services and the financial risks arising from environmental degradation.
Financial actors – including institutional investors, corporations, asset managers, and insurers – also have a critical role to play, not only as funders, but also by stepping up as core architects of a regenerative and sustainable blue economy. To this end, they must create clear taxonomies and metrics, which support consistent decision-making and prevent greenwashing. Blended-finance mechanisms and biodiversity credits and certificates can help provide the right incentives, aligning private finance with measurable sustainability outcomes.
The ocean economy is beginning to take shape. The BEFF laid important foundations, and promising instruments – such as venture capital funds targeting ocean innovation, guarantee facilities supporting small and medium-sized enterprises dedicated to delivering ocean-positive outcomes, and sovereign blue bonds – are gaining traction. But the momentum from the summer must not be squandered. It must be translated into a clear and coordinated strategy for the decade.
This commentary is signed by Pascal Lamy, Co-Chair, Blue Economy and Finance Forum; H.E. Bernard Fautrier, Minister Plenipotentiary, Special Advisor to HSH the Sovereign Prince on environmental issues; Robert Calcagno, CEO, Monaco Oceanographic Institute; Olivier Wenden, Vice-Chairman & CEO, The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation; Razan Al Mubarak, President, International Union for Conservation of Nature; Dona Bertarelli, Executive Chair, Dona Bertarelli Philanthropy; Thierry Deau, CEO, Meridiam; Dame Amelia Fawcett, Co-Chair, International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits; Sylvie Goulard, Co-Chair, International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits; Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, Executive Secretary, United Nations Capital Development Fund; Sanda Ojiambo, CEO, United Nations Global Compact; Frederik Paulsen, Emeritus Chairman, Ferring; Thomas Thune Andersen, Chair, Lloyd’s Register Foundation; Célia Berche, Partnership Manager, Blue Alliance; Angelique Brathwaite, Director Science & Conservation, Blue Alliance; Martin Callow, Acting Portfolio Lead – Nature Bonds, The Nature Conservancy; Alberto Cappato, Vice-President, International Association Cities and Ports; Isabelle De Cremoux, CEO, Seventure Partners; Vassilios Demetriades, Chief Strategy Officer, UW Group; Marisa Drew, Chief Sustainability Officer, Standard Chartered; Ambroise Fayolle, Vice-President, European Investment Bank; Daniela V. Fernandez, Founder & CEO, Velamar; Melissa Garvey, Senior Advisor – Transformative Management & Protection, The Nature Conservancy; Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Research Director, CNRS; Alfredo Giron, Head of Ocean, World Economic Forum; François Houllier, President & CEO, Ifremer; Joe Kramek, President & CEO, World Shipping Council; Gianpiero Leoncini, Executive Vice President, CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean; Nicolas Pascal, CEO, Blue Alliance; Francesco Prazzo, General Manager, SBM Offshore; Daniela Raik, Acting CEO, Conservation International; Kristin Rechberger, CEO, Dynamic Planet & Revive Our Ocean; Rémy Rioux, Chairman, Finance in Common; Jean-Jacques Risso, President, Monaco Scientific Center; Karen Sack, Executive Director & President, Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance; James Scriven, CEO, IDB Invest.
© Project Syndicate, November 2025