How blue financing can sustain ocean conservation and development: A proposed conceptual framework for blue financing mechanism

Abstract

The ocean is suffering the adverse effects of climate change and intense human activities. When addressing these ocean risks, ensuring sufficient finance to sustain the marine ecosystem and resources is an ever-present challenge. Blue finance is a crucial tool to ensure ocean sustainability, aligned with economic growth. This article provides a conceptual understanding of this emerging concept and explores the potential of using legal and institutional mechanisms to increase investment in ocean development programs. By reviewing existing blue financing practices and identifying opportunities and challenges, we find the significant challenge is to develop connections between all stakeholders to illustrate potential incentives for increasing private investment and public donations. As such, we propose a regulatory-driven financing mechanism incorporating the core concepts of blue finance in the context of marine governance, both at the international and domestic levels. Our proposed approach would boost blue financing by seeking a balance between economic growth and ocean sustainability.