Adopting more sustainable ways of managing the ocean is a global priority: protecting its health will bring benefits to all. Developing countries face specific challenges, as many depend heavily on ocean-based industries and are overly exposed to the consequences of ocean degradation. Enhancing their access to science, policy advice and financing would allow them to tap better into the opportunities of a more sustainable ocean economy, including more decent jobs, cleaner energy, improved food security and enhanced resilience, while contributing to the protection of the world’s ocean.
This report provides original and comprehensive evidence to support developing countries, and the international development community, to harness the benefits of sustainable ocean economies. The new evidence in the report focuses on:
-
significant trends in the ocean economy in developing countries, with an original breakdown by countries’ income groupings for six ocean-based industries. Trends in sectors of particular interest to developing countries are also assessed, and include marine fishing and aquaculture, coastal and marine tourism, extractive industries (e.g. oil and gas and seabed mining), transport and logistics industries (freight and passenger transport), shipbuilding, renewable energy, and bio-marine resources.
-
the need for coherent frameworks and the policy instruments to promote the conservation and sustainable use of the ocean, covering a range of regulatory and economic instruments and other approaches. Emphasis is placed on economic instruments that can provide the correct incentives for sustainable production and consumption and also generate and mobilise finance for the conservation and sustainable use of the ocean.
-
the first estimation of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and a mapping and analysis of development co-operation activities for sustainable ocean economies, to promote more effective development co-operation in support of developing countries’ transition to sustainable ocean economies and a global ocean economy that benefits developing countries.
-
an analysis of how development co-operation is helping mobilise private finance for sustainable ocean economies through grants, guarantees, and other leveraging instruments, and a review of innovative financial instruments, developed with the support of development co-operation, to scale up finance for the ocean. Emphasis is placed on the need for development co-operation to help re-orient financial flows away from destructive practices by supporting the integration of sustainability requirements into traditional financial services and investments, in financial markets (e.g. stocks and bonds), alongside credit markets (e.g. loans or bonds).