Indigenous Governance and the Future of Blue Finance in Canada

There is a common assumption in discussions about blue finance that the path to ocean outcomes runs through financial instruments and regulatory frameworks. Develop the right bond structure, align the right policy incentives, and capital will flow toward the outcomes the ocean needs. That assumption is not wrong, but in Canada it is incomplete. The path to ocean outcomes runs increasingly through Indigenous governance, and understanding that changes how blue finance has to be structured to work.

This is not a values argument. It is a structural observation about how marine conservation decisions are actually made in Canada today.

The evidence is visible in how the country's most significant ocean conservation initiatives have been designed over the past decade. The Great Bear Sea Project Finance for Permanence, which closed in 2024 with $335 million in new investment, did not structure Indigenous governance as a condition attached to a financing deal. It built the financing deal around Indigenous governance. Coastal First Nations organisations sit at the centre of the arrangement, not at its edges. The stewardship programs, the Guardian roles, the conservation planning, all of it flows through governance structures that First Nations control. The capital is in service of that governance, not the other way around.

The Tallurutiup Imanga agreement in the eastern Arctic follows the same logic. The Qikiqtani Inuit Association is not a stakeholder consulted in the design of a federal marine protected area. It is a co-governing authority whose participation is constitutive of the arrangement. The stewardship program that employs Inuit community members as marine monitors is not a co-benefit attached to conservation finance. It is part of the governance infrastructure through which the protected area functions. Remove it and the arrangement does not work.

Coast Funds, which manages conservation finance for First Nations across coastal British Columbia, makes the same point from a capital perspective. It is not a grant program that funds Indigenous participation in conservation. It is an Indigenous-led capital allocator that directs endowment income and partner contributions toward stewardship priorities that First Nations communities define. The governance precedes the capital and determines where it goes.

These examples share a common feature. In each case, Indigenous governance is not an input into a conservation or financing process designed by someone else. It is the process. That distinction matters enormously for anyone thinking about how blue finance works in Canada, because it means that the standard model of identifying a project, structuring a financial instrument, and then seeking community consent does not reflect how the most durable Canadian examples have actually been built.

The legal backdrop reinforces this. Section 35 of the Constitution Act recognises and affirms existing Aboriginal and treaty rights. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, in force federally since 2021, requires the government to work in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples to align laws with UNDRIP and develop an action plan. In British Columbia, the Declaration Act has been in force since 2019 and explicitly allows for agreements that support shared decision-making authority. These are not aspirational statements. They are the legal framework within which any significant ocean conservation or blue finance initiative in Canada operates.

The practical implication for blue finance is straightforward. Capital structured around ocean outcomes in Canada needs to work within Indigenous governance frameworks from the outset, not seek alignment with them after the financing is designed. That means engaging with rights-holder organisations early, understanding the governance structures through which decisions are made, and accepting that the timeline and process of getting to a fundable project will reflect Indigenous decision-making norms rather than capital market conventions. It also means that benefit sharing and stewardship employment are not co-benefits to be negotiated at the margin. They are core features of arrangements that are meant to last.

None of this makes blue finance in Canada impossible. It makes it more demanding and more deliberate. The organisations and financing structures that are already working at scale in this space, Coast Funds, the Great Bear Sea PFP, the Tallurutiup Imanga stewardship model, have accepted those demands and built durable arrangements as a result. The ones that have not tend to produce announcements rather than outcomes.

For a field that is still developing its Canadian identity, this is one of the clearer signals available. Blue finance in Canada will not scale through instrument innovation alone. It will scale when the governance structures through which ocean decisions are made are understood and respected by the capital that wants to support them.