Catalysing Ocean Finance: Transforming Markets to Restore and Protect the Global Ocean

UNDP-GEF latest Publication

The world's oceans provide trillions of dollars in goods and services every year, and healthy oceans are crucial to sustainable development. But many ocean ecosystems are in steep decline because of pollution, overexploitation, habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change—and without concerted near-term effort, the damage may become irreversible.

Drawing on 20 years of research and experience, Catalysing Ocean Finance demonstrates in two volumes how a modest investment of public finance — on the order of $5 billion over the next 10-20 years — can scale up proven ocean planning and policy tools, leverage financial flows, transform ocean markets, and reverse the global decline in ocean health. Catalysing Ocean Finance demonstrates that, far from being an intractable problem, sustainable ocean management could become a successful legacy of today's generation of decision-makers.

Drawing from the portfolio of International Waters projects financially supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 31 of the world’s most important trans­boundary marine and freshwater ecosystems, six case studies have been selected to illustrate the application of market transformation instruments to promote sustainable coastal and marine resource development: (i) Danube River/ Black Sea; (ii) Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem; (iii) Rio de la Plata/Maritime Front; (iv) Seas of East Asia; (v) West/Central Pacific Fisheries; and (vi) Global Ballast Water Programme.

The publication can be downloaded starting Friday, December 14, at http://www.thegef.org/gef/pubs/catalysing-ocean-finance