A guided reading path
You may come to the ocean through government, regulation, academia, applied research, philanthropy or another public institution. This path begins with evidence and governance, then follows how financial choices affect what becomes possible.
First
These pieces connect policy, evidence and institutional design to the financial decisions operating underneath them.
Blue finance does not arrive the same way everywhere. In Canada, how boards, banks, credit unions, and regulators already make decisions sets the terms, well before any new instrument is involved.
Read this piece →There is no single rulebook for blue finance. Four institutions are writing the rules from four different starting points, and they agree on more than their different mandates would suggest.
Read this piece →Blue finance directs capital toward the health of ocean systems, using bonds, swaps, and blended structures adapted from green finance. The label is the easy part. Whether it means anything depends on the standards, verification, and enforcement behind it.
Read this piece →Next
Follow those connections into regulation, public investment, Indigenous governance, industry strategy and the evidence used to make decisions.
Canada invented the financing model the conservation world now copies, and committed real money to its oceans. It is also missing its own marine targets. The gap between the two is the most useful thing its record shows.
Read →After nearly two decades of talks, the first treaty governing biodiversity on the high seas became law in January 2026. It reaches almost half the planet, and Canada has to account for it.
Read →In Canada, the conservation deals that actually work were built around Indigenous governance from the start, not bolted onto it afterward. That changes what blue finance has to do here, and why so many well-intentioned projects never get past the announcement.
Read →A country trades expensive debt for cheaper debt and promises to spend the difference on the ocean. It sounds clean, and the headline numbers are large. The harder questions are who takes a cut, who sets the rules, and whether the fish ever actually come back.
Read →The ocean economy is typically defined as the industries that operate near the water. That definition misses the larger reality. Much of the broader economy depends on ocean systems that financial analysis has never fully accounted for.
Read →The UN Ocean Decade runs from 2021 to 2030 with seven ambitious outcomes. Its real contribution is narrower and more useful: making ocean ignorance less defensible, and lowering the information costs that make ocean-linked financial decisions hard to make well.
Read →