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.
A few pieces that show how this publication thinks.
Blue finance asks how capital can support healthy ocean systems while accounting for the risks and consequences financial decisions create. The label is the easy part. Whether it means anything depends on the standards, governance and evidence behind it.
Read essay
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.
Insurers are usually the first to put a number on coastal risk, and not because they are more virtuous than anyone else. They cannot defer the cost of getting it wrong.
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.
Choose the path closest to the work you already know.
Begin with how lending, investment, risk and capital allocation connect to ocean outcomes in Canada.
Begin with how finance influences ocean industries, conservation, Indigenous stewardship and coastal life.
Begin with the evidence, institutions and public decisions that shape what gets financed, governed and protected.
New analysis, commentary and research.
Flood, fisheries exposure, port disruption. Each one sits on a bank's register as its own category, and the ocean condition connecting them sits on none of them. What OSFI's climate guidance measures, what it leaves out, and why a risk nobody can measure well ends up mispriced.
Ten projects worldwide are issuing blue carbon credits, and one accounts for most of them. Here is what the market actually looks like, what a lender needs before carbon revenue counts toward a loan, and why Canada has not issued a credit yet.
A fisheries stock assessment does more than count fish. It can determine the quota, license value and borrowing capacity, and in some cases whether a coastal community can finance the economic participation its rights make possible.
Reef decline is gradual and self-reinforcing. Coral gives way to algae, the reef flattens, and recovery gets harder with each event. The protection and fisheries it provided never showed on a balance sheet, so the loss registers only when replacing them becomes unavoidable.
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.
A four-part Research Dossier connecting how the industry works, its relationship with the ocean, and the role of finance.
A concise synthesis for readers who want the main findings and implications.
Coming soonHow the industry works, where value is created, and what its structure means.
Read the reportWhat the industry depends on, what it changes, and where ecological limits matter.
Coming soonHow capital supports the industry and where better alignment with ocean sustainability is possible.
Read the reportOur monthly newsletter covering significant developments in Canadian blue finance, ocean investment and marine stewardship.
Subscribe to Blue CurrentsA periodic measure of the maturity of blue finance in Canada, and how it’s evolving. Published as part of Blue Currents.
Explore the Blue Register