Ocean and Coastal Future Blue Finance Conference: Who Will Pay for the Ocean?

By Rhianna Rees

Who should pay for a healthy ocean? It’s a strange question when you think about it. Right now, it appears that our oceans require some form of regeneration/restoration, and that fact doesn't seem to be in debate. Who then foots the bill? Is it government mandates, through subsidies and blue bonds? Coastal communities, communally funding the very ecosystems they depend on? Or companies, footing the bill for their carbon and waste emissions? I had hoped to get the answers to some of these questions at the Blue Finance Conference, but I felt I came away with even more questions to an even bigger problem.

The conference ran from the 10 – 11 September; the cast of attendees ranged from investment portfolio managers to government advisors, marine consultants to biologists. All of them wrestling with the simple but maddeningly slippery question: how do you fund a healthy ocean, and who picks up the tab?

The first two sessions of the day were about connecting finance and ocean sustainability through investment. The general consensus appeared to be a focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with clear KPIs attached. The point that was stressed, is not to smother startups with tick-box audits, but to create a shared language that keeps everyone honest.

There was talk of litigation (which has a role in establishing precedents), subsidies (which have a role in confusing everybody), and artificial intelligence which is arriving at the ocean’s door whether we like it or not. The idea of AI-powered ocean innovation feels exciting until you remember that AI itself is an energy hog. As one participant asked: where are the checks and balances? Who is measuring the carbon footprint of the machines that are meant to solve these issues?

Then came the thorny issue of credits. Should ecosystem services (things like mangroves preventing floods, or seagrass meadows storing carbon) be paid for like commodities? Investors like the idea of buying credits and selling them back at a profit as their ROI, but communities, understandably, want more than to be reduced to line items in someone else’s portfolio for profit.

Daniel Wilde of the Commonwealth Secretariat shared some key numbers which were repeated throughout the conference. Protecting 30% of the ocean by 2040 will cost $15.8 billion per year — up from the current $1.2 billion. This is a massively ambitious target. Who on earth would be willing to pay that? He did also point to opportunities: more investment in small island states, incubators for seaweed businesses, and a “blue bond handbook” designed to guide governments through the process of issuing marine-friendly bonds.

Dickon Howell of Howell Marine Consulting represented the inconvenient truth of the matter: UK seas, he reminded us, still don’t meet good environmental standards. Policy ambitions are stacking up like ships in a fog: net zero, marine net gain, biodiversity targets... but there’s no coherent system to link them together. His call to action was clear: embed restoration commitments directly into leasing and contracts. In other words, start writing it into law.

On measurement, Klaas Vos of Ocean Fox Advisory made an impassioned plea for “measuring what matters.” He outlined the DPSIR framework (Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, Response), in other words, how scientists assess environmental change. The big risk, he warned, is repeating the mistakes of carbon markets: creating credits without a baseline, building frameworks nobody trusts, and leaving buyers adrift in a sea of unverifiable claims.

The spectral kraken of greenwashing loomed large. Tom Brook of the WWF argued for mandatory disclosure of emissions, with companies forced to pay directly for their pollution. That way, the incentive shifts from inventing shiny offset projects to cutting emissions in the first instance.

Karen Sack of ORAA reminded us what’s at stake. Without mangroves, coastal communities are left dangerously exposed to flooding (the same is true for seaweed forests). Kat Bruce of NatureMetrics added the same communities at the highest risk often receive short-term funding (two or three years at best) which leaves them unable to cover ongoing costs and maintenance once the funding period has finished.

It was pointed out that wealthy owners of shot-term lets often avoid paying council tax, yet happily rely on local services, like the NHS and bin collections to provide clean beaches. The mismatch between billion-dollar finance conversations about how to make money, and coastal communities struggling with clean water, drug problems, and second-home driven inequality was stark.

The conference untimately left me asking a fair few questions. Blue finance is essential for coastal development and communities need it, but who pays? Is it those who see it as a worthwhile investment, those who can make money from it, those who are forced to pay for previous destruction, or all of the above? There are still huge gaps in data, especially a lack of baseline data, there is also a lack of standardisation in methods of measurement. Communities must be a part of the design. But ultimately, funding the ocean isn’t just about raising capital, it’s about resetting how we value things. Not just profit, but place, people, and the deep blue world that makes all the rest possible.

I look forward to future conferences like these, where government will be presenting the answers to the questions above.