Around two-thirds of globally listed companies are exposed to ocean-based risk in the trillions of dollars over the next decade, according to an expert speaking during a webinar on Wednesday.
Lucy Holmes, senior director for blue finance at the WWF, told the online event that the impact of continuing business-as-usual on private companies is significant, and urged action as soon as possible, with the ocean-based economy often overlooked.
“Over two-thirds of globally listed companies are in some way exposed to ocean health decline, which presents central value at risk of over $8.5 trillion dollars over the next decade or so,” she said, adding that this number was probably a lot higher.
“But [the figure] also radically decreases if we are able to adopt and follow a more sustainable development pathway.”
Land-based nature and biodiversity impact is coming into focus following the historic Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed last December in Montreal, specifically for the private sector.
The framework and its goals also cover the ocean, but marine protection and impact is often overlooked, with hype building mainly around land-based biodiversity credits, as one example, and few instances of pilots for sea-based restoration.
This is especially the case given that around 75% of the ocean falls outside of country jurisdictions and is therefore more complicated to legislate to protect.
“We are just starting to understand how rich and vulnerable the biodiversity in this area is and how much of the carbon sequestered in our world is actually in this sphere that’s beyond national jurisdiction,” said Jessica Smith, co-head, nature, at the UN Environment Programme, the body that co-organised the webinar.
For more than 10 years, an agreement on the high seas had been in negotiation, and just last month, there was finally an deal in principle to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.
This ambition aligns with the so-called ’30×30′ commitment in the GBF.
The treaty was described as a “monumental win” by Roland Morillo, senior vice president of investors Rockefeller AM, speaking during the event.
“This is something that is going to have the potential to create a governance and a legal framework for the sustainable management activities in marine environments,” he said.
A report from the WWF estimates that the ocean-based economy is conservatively worth $24 trillion, which would put it as the 7th largest in the world.
In a recent feature, experts suggested that momentum is building behind a new moratorium on deep sea mining.
By Roy Manuell – roy@carbon-pulse.com
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