Sustainable Ocean Investing Gets Real: Opportunities Across All Asset Classes

The Blue Economy has become a hot topic over the past few years thanks to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the work of NGOs and philanthropies, and an increasing awareness that climate and ocean issues are intricately intertwined and must be addressed together in finding solutions. The idea of ocean investing is not new - examples include shipping, aquaculture and tourism. What is new, however, is the proliferation of instruments and opportunities that can help finance a sustainable Blue Economy over the coming decades. In the public equity markets, this not only includes the first Oceans ETF and a specialized oceans fund, but also a wide variety of instruments to attack the greenhouse gases problem, which is at the core of so many of the ocean’s challenges, including warming and sea level rise, deoxygenation and acidification. In the fixed income markets, Blue Bonds of several types have emerged alongside Green Bonds and have the potential to unlock additional sources of capital going forward. In the private markets, there has been explosive growth in global innovation, fueled by incubators, accelerators, clusters, universities and governments. There are now more than a hundred innovation-related organizations around the globe focused on creating and/or serving the needs of a bold new breed of ocean-oriented startups. In addition, there are private market funds dedicated to virtually all sectors of the Blue Economy with many of them focused on aquaculture, technology and plastics. Speakers: Ted Janulis, Founder and Principal, Investable Oceans Chaoni Huang, Executive Director, Head of Sustainable Capital Markets, Global Markets Asia Pacific, BNP Paribas Marisa Drew, Chief Sustainability Officer & Global Head Sustainability Strategy, Advisory and Finance, Credit Suisse Amy Novogratz, Cofounder/ Managing Partner, Aqua-Spark