Finance and the Ocean Are One System
A fishing boat belongs to somebody, feeds a family, and rests on a stock that may or may not be there next year. The divisions between those things are ours, not the ocean's.
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Evolving finance fora living ocean
The health of the ocean reflects choices made across generations, including choices made in finance. Blue Finance Canada brings those downstream effects into view and examines what it would mean for finance to take greater responsibility for them.
Selected Essays
A few pieces that show how this publication thinks.
Taking Stock
Who Checks That Blue Finance Works
Construction lenders do not release funds until an independent surveyor confirms the work was done. Blue finance has strong mechanisms for tracking where money goes, but much weaker ones for verifying what happened in the water. The capacity to close that gap already exists on Canada’s three coasts.
Indigenous Stewardship
The Great Bear Sea Project Finance for Permanence
Most conservation funding runs out when the political cycle turns. The Great Bear Sea agreement was built to outlast that: $335 million, an endowment at its core, and Indigenous governance as the foundation, not the recipient.
The Basics
What is Blue Finance?
Financing an ocean industry is not the same as blue finance. What the term covers, where its boundary sits, what the major frameworks refuse to fund, and how far Canada has got.
Start Here
Choose the path closest to the work you already know.
Coming from Finance
Begin with how lending, investment, risk and capital allocation connect to ocean outcomes in Canada.
- What Insurers Know About Canada’s Coastal Risk
- Can a Bank Be Concentrated in the Ocean?
- What Financial History Can Teach Us About Blue Finance
Coming from Ocean, Coasts and Communities
Begin with how finance influences ocean industries, conservation, Indigenous stewardship and coastal life.
- The Great Bear Sea Project Finance for Permanence
- Who Pays for Marine Protected Areas
- How Do We Know What We Are Doing to the Ocean?
Coming from Policy and Research
Begin with the evidence, institutions and public decisions that shape what gets financed, governed and protected.
- Canada’s Role in the Development of Blue Finance
- Who Leads Ocean Conservation in Canada
- Who Sets the Rules in Blue Finance
Latest Writing
New analysis, commentary and research.
The Rules
Can Canadian Directors Raise Environmental Issues at the Board?
A Canadian director can raise ocean exposure at the board. The harder problem is that the exposure is spread across functions and nobody owns the whole picture.
Taking Stock
Who Remembers a Company’s Environmental Record?
A missed payment follows a borrower to the next lender. A fuel spill in a First Nation's fishing grounds usually doesn't. Why environmental history stays behind, and where it travels.
The Players
How Pension Funds Allocate Ocean Capital
A pension liability and a port terminal share an unusual trait: both run for decades. That makes pension capital a natural home for ocean infrastructure, and Canada's funds already hold it. What they lack is an allocation category that would let them fund the ocean economy on purpose.
Ocean Life
Phytoplankton
In September 2019 the water off Newfoundland turned milky blue in the wrong month. What that colour is made of, and why somebody has been sampling the same spot in Halifax Harbour since 1992.
Industry Profiles
Each Research Dossier looks at an industry from four perspectives: the main findings, how the industry works, its relationship with the ocean, and the role of finance. Here’s one.
Featured Research Dossier
Offshore Energy in Canada
A four-part Research Dossier connecting how the industry works, its relationship with the ocean, and the role of finance.
Research Brief
A concise synthesis for readers who want the main findings and implications.
Coming soonOffshore Energy: The Industry
How the industry works, where value is created, and what its structure means.
Read the reportThe Ocean
What the industry depends on, what it changes, and where ecological limits matter.
Coming soonOffshore Energy: Finance
How capital supports the industry and where better alignment with ocean sustainability is possible.
Read the reportBlue Currents
Our monthly newsletter covering significant developments in Canadian blue finance, ocean investment and marine stewardship.
Subscribe to Blue CurrentsThe Blue Register
A monthly measure of the maturity of blue finance in Canada, and how it’s evolving. Published as part of Blue Currents.
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