The Instruments
In 2018 one of the world's smallest countries borrowed fifteen million dollars and, in doing so, showed the world what a blue bond could be. The money was small. What Seychelles attached to it, in conditions, reporting, and marine protection, was the part worth studying.
The Rules
Antarctica has no owner, no permanent population, and limited economic activity. It has been governed cooperatively for more than sixty years. That turns out to be a useful reference point for the ocean.
The Rules
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.
Stressors
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not the solid island of trash it is usually pictured as. What it actually is, and how it forms, says a lot about how materials move through the ocean.
Where Things Stand
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.
The Basics
No one set out to invent blue finance. It is the name we gave to something that had already been happening for years, as people working on fisheries, coastlines, development lending, and ocean science slowly realized they were circling the same problem.
The Basics
New instruments and funding models get most of the attention. The harder test is whether financial decisions stay connected to the systems they affect, across longer time horizons, indirect consequences and measurable outcomes.
The Basics
Every financial decision lands somewhere real, and for a large part of Canada's economy, that somewhere is the ocean. Three ideas explain how capital and ocean systems connect, and what blue finance does about it.
Where Things Stand
Canada is building its first sovereign wealth fund. The fund wasn't designed with oceans in mind, but the gap it could fill is exactly where blue finance has been stuck for years.
Blue Currents
A monthly update on how finance is evolving to support ocean stewardship in Canada.
Blue Currents
A monthly update on how finance is evolving to support ocean stewardship in Canada.