BLUE BONDS - 9th ANNUAL WORLD OCEAN SUMMIT 2022

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WEDNESDAY 2nd MARCH 2022

This global event is taking place over four days, and will bring together a very broad cross-section of the ocean community, from businesses to scientists, government, investors, and civil society. It will feature six industry tracks: shipping, fishing, aquaculture, energy, tourism, and plastics.

In order for Blue Bond projects to come to pass, it is necessary for the governments have a high level of commitment; Grit.

The private sector can take these risks, but only with suitable finance, support and guarantees, projects might see the light of day. Again, it all boils down to the level of dialogue with the G20 and IMF, and provide credit deals in favour of credible conservation programmes.

Melissa Garvey began working with The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado Chapter in 2006, and from 2014 to 2017 she was deputy state director for the Washington State Chapter. She became managing director of global oceans strategic initiatives in 2018, and global director of ocean protection in 2019. Ms Garvey leads the team responsible for TNC’s global programmes for ocean protection, coastal resilience, coastal-wetland conservation and reef-systems restoration, blue carbon, ocean planning and mapping, and community-based conservation. Her work includes the Blue Bonds for Ocean Conservation strategy, whose goal is to protect more than 4 million square kilometres of ocean by restructuring debt and leveraging $1.6bn for ocean conservation.

Blue Bonds are issued mostly to islands as they try to meet the Sustainability Development Goals, in relation to ocean conservation or nature conservation projects.

What is the big picture for ocean regeneration, and how can collaboration between governments, industry, investors, scientists and NGOs bring it about? These sessions will outline International expertise, ambition and new strategies to restore ocean health.

Slav Gatchev is managing director for sustainable debt at The Nature Conservancy. Since March 2021 he has led a team of eight professionals in developing and closing sovereign financings that unlock funding for conservation, including Belize’s refinancing of $550m of external commercial debt. Before this Mr Gatchev was co-head of Delphos International, a Washington, DC-based advisory firm. During his two decades at Delphos he led the raising of $3bn from development finance institutions for emerging-market infrastructure, and launched and grew the firm’s transaction advisory business. Mr Glatchev served two terms on the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee at the US Department of Commerce.

Marlena Hurley is managing director for political risk insurance and reinsurance at DFC, the US government’s development finance institution. Her portfolio includes investment insurance worldwide across all sectors, with a focus on climate finance, energy and infrastructure, and global health. Most recently Ms Hurley led the team that provided insurance related to the TNC Blue Bonds for Marine Conservation in Belize. She worked at DFC in the 1990s and returned in 2015 after working in investment firms in Russia and Hungary focusing on investments in financial services.

This session argues that public-private collaborations are key to protecting the health of the ocean. Hosted by The Nature Conservancy, a leading global NGO, the event will bring together a diverse group of collaborators including DFC, IDB, ADB, Credit Suisse and the Government of Belize to showcase how a thoughtful combination of conservation and finance tools can deliver the transformative changes we need to durably protect our ocean. We will be talking about Blue Bonds and other sovereign debt strategies, the costs and benefits of ocean conservation, how to unlock funding for “blue economy” projects, best implementation practices, and more – leaving you with concrete ideas of how to sustainably finance ocean conservation.

One of the most active categories in climate tech last year, an activity that shows little sign of slowing down two months into 2022, is 'fintech' software.

WHAT IS FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY – FINTECH ?

Fintech is used to describe new tech that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. ​​​At its core, fintech is utilized to help companies, business owners and consumers better manage their financial operations, processes, and lives by utilizing specialized software and algorithms that are used on computers and, increasingly, smartphones. Fintech, the word, is a combination of "financial technology". 

U.S. and European climate startups in the category attracted $1.2 billion in 2021, three times the collective funding of the previous years in which this category was a thing, according to an analysis by German venture capital CommerzVentures. It’s little wonder that CommerzVentures — which has money in companies including ClimateView (a risk management app for cities) and Doconomy (a carbon footprint calculator) — this week added another fund focused on this space; it has 550 million euros (about $617 million according to current exchange rates) across its three funds.

Ramzi Issa is a managing director at Credit Suisse in New York. He is head of credit structuring in the Americas, leading the origination of structured credit products in the region within the investment bank. Mr Issa joined Credit Suisse in 2007. Prior to this he worked at the Central Bank of Canada for three years as an economist and trader.

Melissa Walsh is programme manager of the Ocean Finance Initiative for the Asian Development Bank, supporting ADB’s commitment to raise $5bn for ocean health by 2024. She is an expert in ocean finance and the blue economy. Ms Walsh has worked in marine conservation in government, the private and non-profit sectors and academia. She has more than 20 years’ experience in coral reef science, management, and conservation finance, working in Hawaii, the Pacific Islands and Australia. Before joining ADB Ms Walsh designed and managed the Pacific Ocean Finance Programme to improve the amount and efficacy of finance for Pacific Ocean governance.

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Beverly Wade is director of the Blue Bonds and Project for Finance Permanence Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister of Belize. She is responsible for implementation of blue-loan and conservation funding agreements and for coordinating the delivery of key marine-conservation targets and commitments. With 27 years’ experience in fisheries and oceans management, Ms Wade has played a leadership role in establishing marine protected areas and has championed an ecosystems and blended-finance approach for the conservation of nature and special areas as key to the development of Belize’s blue economy and adaptation to climate change. The areas they have sought to protect have contributed to around $1 billion dollars to their economy. With climate and conservation financing they have to be innovative when dealing with climate related debt.

The panel of speakers Tuesday 1st March 2022, provided some very interesting aspects of financing the change to zero carbon shipping, where it is by no means clear what fuels will prevail, and how aggressive the IMO will be in setting targets. Concessional finance might include a tie in with carbon taxes and R&D innovation funding - or even scrappage.

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Charles Goddard imagines and builds the Group’s flagship initiatives, the purpose of which is to catalyse progress on key issues of the day. He works closely with partners on themes ranging from ageing and longevity to ocean health, focusing particularly on healthcare, the Anthropocene and the blue economy. Based in Hong Kong, Charles was previously editorial director, Asia, at the Economist Intelligence Unit, director of research in Asia, and managing director of the Economist Corporate Network, a peer network for senior executives. He is concurrently executive director of the Group’s World Ocean Initiative.

The 9th annual World Ocean Summit will feature six industry tracks focusing on:

1. shipping, 
2. fishing, 
3. aquaculture, 
4. energy, 
5. tourism, and 
6. plastics. 

This is the nub of a blue growth agenda, including deep sea mining and biotech.

Speakers provided reality-checks on how their industries are progressing towards 2030 targets, and what needs to happen next.

High-level plenary sessions will address cross-industry topics including ocean finance, ocean governance, and ocean restoration solutions. Speakers will discuss the finance gap, assess new technologies and highlight successful initiatives that are beginning to make an impact on ocean health.

WHAT IS CLIMATE FINTECH ?

The CommerzVentures report considers startups focused on addressing nine different finance processes including carbon offsetting, carbon accounting, impact investing, ESG reporting, climate risk management, sustainable banking, supply chain analytics, impact financing and carbon credits trading.

While carbon offsetting apps and platforms represent the largest sub-category with the more than 100 climate fintech startups considered, carbon accounting and climate risk management (à la Jupiter Intelligence) attracted the most funding during 2021, with $410 million and $304 million in funding, respectively, according to the analysis. There were about 290 startups included — close to 70 percent of the funding was at the seed or pre-seed stage. European firms dominated the research: There were 228 considered, versus 60 U.S. startups. But U.S. ventures tended to attract a higher amount of funds on an individual basis.

“The ecosystem is so vibrant, and so many new companies are getting started and getting to scale,” Paul Morgenthaler, partner with CommerzVentures, was recently quoted as saying. “These companies will become interesting to different types of investors … I would expect even more activity and even larger funding rounds.”

Another example from just last week. Project Canary, a Denver-based data analytics company that helps with environmental assessments, just raised $111 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight partners with participation from six other backers including Brookfield Growth and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. “The measurement economy has arrived — expectations for precise, verified environmental action are the new normal,” said Project Canary Co-founder and CEO Chris Romer, in a statement.

Indeed, the innovation emerging from the climate fintech space is refreshing — and it could be hugely disruptive across the financial and insurance sectors. Consider the $15 million Series A round in mid-February for a New York-based parametric insurance technology company called FloodFlash. 

The company, which is partnered with Munich Re (also one of its backers), has created a platform that relies on computer models, cloud software and monitoring technologies to pay out “catastrophic” flood claims within 48 hours — it aims to serve homeowners and smaller businesses that find it difficult to participate in traditional insurance markets. 

It’s still early days for climate fintech. After all, that $1.2 billion referenced earlier is just a tiny sliver of the $60 billion in funding for climate tech writ large during the first half of 2021. But there are other signs that interest in the intersection of climate change and finance is growing.

In late February, the University of Birmingham in the U.K. added accounting for climate change into its mainstream accounting and finance degree program. These are not elective classes.

“Learning about carbon accounting showed me how influential organizations could be in encouraging societies’ behavioral change, and the complexity of carbon accounting implementation into organizations,” said third-year student Sophie Yates, in a statement. “My outlook on climate change has changed from being opinions on how they could be sustainable, to looking at the morals of society and responsibility for changing our future globally.” 

It’s just one school, in just one country, but money talks. “At the end of the day, a carbon footprint is always the result of a transaction that has taken place,” The climate tech community would do well to keep that in mind.

When fintech emerged in the 21st Century, the term was initially applied to the technology employed at the back-end systems of established financial institutions. ​Since then, however, there has been a shift to more consumer-oriented services and therefore a more consumer-oriented definition. Fintech now includes different sectors and industries such as education, retail banking, fundraising and nonprofit, and investment management to name a few.

Fintech also includes the development and use of crypto-currencies such as bitcoin. While that segment of fintech may see the most headlines, the big money still lies in the traditional global banking industry and its multi-trillion-dollar market capitalization. 

CONTACTS

general enquiries: oceansummit@economist.com.

Marketing or PR event enquiries:

Naomi Grice
Marketing Manager
naomigrice@economist.com

Speaking Enquiries:

If you are speaking or you have an enquiry about speaking: 
oceansummitspeakers@economist.com.

Sponsorship opportunities details about sponsoring and partnering.

Tatiana Der Avedissian
Email: tatianaderavedissian@economist.com
Tel: +44 (0) 739 560 4731

Alice Calvert
Email: alicecalvert@economist.com
Tel: +44 (0)795 6330 689

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://events.economist.com/world-ocean-summit/

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