World Ocean Radio - Ocean Finance
Insurance is everywhere, established to transfer risk or to compensate for loss. Deep-sea mining has attracted much attention lately, as we look to offshore exploration and extraction for energy and mineral resources. As the UN International Seabed Authority deliberates standards and regulations related to drilling into the ocean floor, insurers of deep-sea risk are calculating potential loss as potentially so great that no coverage would be adequate to cover the costs of consequence, and no payment large enough to mitigate the risk of deep-sea mining.
"The state of the ocean is not good." So states Vidar Helgesen in the forward to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) State of the Ocean Report that was released in May. This week on World Ocean Radio we are summarizing the findings.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're defining new ways to consider profit as a return on investment: not as an enemy of change, but rather as a catalyst for a sustainable strategy for the future. An effective sustainability approach must include the true asset cost of natural resources and the post-production costs of downstream effects to include pollution, public health, and remediation.
Over the next few editions of World Ocean Radio we will be discussing a recent publication entitled “A Forgotten Element in the Blue Economy: Marine Biomimetics and Inspiration from the Deep Sea,” authored by Robert Blasiak from the Stockholm Resilience Center in Sweden. The article identifies seven broad categories of biomimetic design: adhesion, anti-fouling, armor, buoyancy, movement, sensory, and stealth. In this 3-part series we'll discuss each with examples of application, technological invention, and as effective solution models for response to negative human intervention and climate change, and for ocean protection and conservation.
We are aware of the key role played by insurance, more so as we face increasing events of extreme weather destruction. Government agencies are signaling policy and coverage shifts, and there is a growing realization that existing policies and programs are not adequate to the new realities. Insurance is fundamental yet largely invisible until it is not there, and may be the driving force toward necessary change for the future.
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series by listing some of the most critical changes and improvements required to create a new, sustainable ocean economy--in essence a checklist for step-by-step actions toward future governance, regulation and investment in the world ocean.
RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week on World Ocean Radio as part of the multi-part RESCUE series we revisit the concept of ecosystem services accounting and propose that, in order to create a culture of investment for our future, we must apply energy, imagination and innovation to enable transition and success. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a breakdown of a 2020 Report by the World Resource Institute High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy that offered some revised definitions and pathways toward a more sustainable future, including three fundamental questions as a framework for change: 1. How will a decision change the wealth on an ocean balance sheet, including all produced assets? 2. How will a decision change net national income or welfare, and how will those changes be distributed between different groups of people? and 3. How will the decision change ocean-based economic production and create new means to achieve social and economic goals?
This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a turn toward the topic of finance. This episode lays out a plan for future editions that focuses on examples that calculate the value of the ocean including ecosystems services, accounting and practices that calculate the value of goods and services, accounting of measured growth, and public acceptance of some the changes required to transform the world we live in.
RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're discussing an Executive Order entitled "Change in Natural Asset Wealth" signed by US President Joe Biden on Earth Day in April 2022, and the recommendations laid out in the 15-year plan that will measure economic value of natural resources, recognizing that a robust economy depends on a healthy natural environment.
We have focused the last few World Ocean Radio episodes on the value of ecosystems, how we assess, monetize and protect with new practices that are constructive and sustainable. How do we move forward? This week we are discussing potential approaches that include protection of resources and new regulations against abuse and irresponsible consumption, and we propose expanding the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multi-lateral trust fund, to include a new ocean sustainability bank that incentivizes change and lends funds based on sustainability principles and a new definition of return on investment.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're talking about the latest OUR OCEAN Conference in Palau and the contradiction of mangrove protection and invested monies for environmental protection interests. What happens with all the promises made at OUR OCEAN? Where does the money go? What have past commitments achieved and how are outcomes measured?
Is economic growth antithetical to the overall health of society? This week on World Ocean Radio we discuss the concentration of capital and offer two examples of an ocean economy currently dominated by special interests, including the recent creation of Natural Asset Companies designed to turn ecosystem services into tradable commodities.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have long been the cogs turning the wheels of global economics, driving infrastructure growth and economic development while often supporting the exploitation of natural resources and ignoring the social consequences of poverty, displacement, and disruption. Some have argued that the World Bank and the IMF have outlived their purpose, no longer effective as tools for the future. This week we're discussing the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a little known agency that finances large international projects with demonstrated financial outcomes that are progressive and sustainable.
This week on World Ocean Radio: five suggested strategies as laid out by Karl Burkart (Managing Director of One Earth and formerly the Director of Science & Technology at the DiCaprio Foundation) by which to create the funds required to meet the urgent global climate crisis.
How can ecological resistance be sustained? This week on World Ocean Radio, part 40 of the BLUEprint Series, we outline various tools to confront the challenge of stressed ocean systems: coastal zone management, pollution reduction, marine spatial planning, and other active restoration programs that may serve to diminish the negative decline and define a new, sustainable way forward.
The Blue Economy is providing new investment in ocean resources. How might individual investors do blue economy investing the right way, and which investments meet the criteria for true blue investing? This week on World Ocean Radio, part 40 of the BLUEprint Series, host Peter Neill dives into the true meaning of the often over-used "blue economy" terminology and describes his recent discovery of a strategic initiatives portfolio conceived by JPI Oceans in Europe that strives to increase the impact of national investments in marine and maritime research and innovation. And he shares the values, goals and objectives that propose a structure around which specific investments could be made to achieve social and monetary return while achieving a commitment to sustainability and the ocean.
In this episode, part thirty-seven of the multi-part BLUEprint series, we continue to discuss the take-aways from the recently published 2nd United Nations World Ocean Assessment, a report that looks at the social, environmental, demographic and economic trends, as well as a review of the integrated sustainable management of coasts and oceans as driven by science, technology and innovation. In this episode we look at the report through the lens of ecosystem service analysis, the ways in which we view and value Nature, and some examples of projects globally that are based ecosystem service accounting that are preserving places and biodiversity.
This week on World Ocean Radio we broadcast the 31st part of the ongoing BLUEprint series. In this episode we discuss the Blue Economy and the "business as usual" operations of The Ocean 100--the largest trans-national companies that account for the most profits from the ocean while also generating the most emissions, waste and other pollutants to the ocean. We describe what is known as the Blue Acceleration and argue that current economic activity is not meeting the requirements for economic growth and improved livelihoods while simultaneously preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem, and that these Ocean 100 companies could be a force for change of the Blue Economy with help from public awareness and consumer pressure.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part twenty-nine of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we discuss the March 2021 release by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs announcing a new statistical framework entitled the "System of Environmental/Economic Accounting" (SEEA EA) which would ensure that natural capital (the contributions of forests, oceans, and other ecosystems) are integrated into economic reporting. This move may reshape decision- and policy-making toward sustainable development: natural capital calculated as equal to financial capital, as a mandatory inclusion in the budgets and estimates for all new development projects and corporate initiatives.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part nineteen of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we discuss the financial tools such as subsidies, regulation and private investment that have historically been used to advance conventional change in the economy. We ask listeners to consider these same tools of finance used to sustain natural capital, releasing value for the benefit of all mankind.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part eighteen of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we discuss the concept of blue bonds and a new Nature Conservancy program designed for small island and coastal nations to reinvest in their natural resources by refinancing national debt in a way that secures funding for a commitment to protect near-shore ocean areas such as coral reefs and mangroves.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part seventeen of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we ask a series of questions that challenge the current insurance system in the US, including a vision for a redesign built around risk prevention and for reinvestment of premiums in systems that anticipate disruption and aggregate to larger strategies that reduce costs overall.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part sixteen of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we talk about the blue and the green economy in the context of profit motive and how it can be good business to adopt climate risk disclosure and guidelines for investment assessment standards that balance risk against opportunity. We argue that if used properly, this could result in new and transformative change toward a cleaner, more sustainable future.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part fifteen of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we look at the Federal Reserve in the USA through the lens of environmental destruction, biodiversity loss and other impacts. And we ask, "Why would any central bank enable investment that is proven to be destructive to the value of Nature--our most precious asset?"
