Perry World House’s ‘Financing Resilience for Ocean Economies’ workshop brought together policymakers, practitioners, and academics to discuss how to close the $175 billion annual investment gap in ocean resilience.
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Penn’s Perry World House convened a workshop in early April titled “Financing Resilience for Ocean Economies,” bringing together policymakers, practitioners, and academics from Australia, Barbados, Costa Rica, India, Maldives, Palau, and Seychelles. Other participants included the International Monetary Fund, InterAmerican Development Bank, United Nations University, United Nations Environment Programme, and the Alliance of Small Island States.
Perry World House convened a workshop titled “Financing Resilience for Ocean Economies” on April 9.
(Image: Courtesy of Perry World House)
Together, experts discussed how to close the $175 billion annual investment gap in ocean resilience. While the blue economy is projected to reach $3 trillion annually by 2030, participants recognized that this growth remains deeply uneven, leaving Small Island Developing States and other coastal communities—whose livelihoods depend on marine tourism, fishing, and offshore energy—without the finance they need to build resilience and safeguard their development.
The workshop unpacked the elements and framing needed to create a more coherent, and appropriately scaled oceans financing architecture that could withstand shocks, learn from terrestrial examples, and underwrite development. Oceans represent a unique challenge for financing because they straddle the line between public and private goods, making it difficult to apply standard terrestrial models.
Among the considerations for financing discussed were establishing a revenues, savings, and costs framework; reforming global credit rating agency standards; utilizing models like patient capital, donor guarantees, and grants to support countries too rich to access finance from the International Development Association but too small or risky for market-rate private financing; and ensuring institutions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Global Environment Facility, and Global Climate Fund recognize oceans as a major asset that needs to be included across all agenda items.
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