Latest content: Commonwealth Blue Charter

The importance of the world’s ocean for human societies and environmental health can hardly be overstated. Approximately 3 billion people across the world rely on a healthy ocean for their food security and livelihoods. The goods and services coastal and oceanic environments provide are conservatively worth US$3 trillion to the global economy per year, equivalent to the fifth-largest economy by gross domestic product in 2015. However, the health of the ocean is under significant threat, facing simultaneous, serious and growing threats from climate change, over-exploitation, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Yet funding thus far has been insufficient. Despite the critical need to protect the ocean and the many mutually beneficial reasons for greater action on ocean issues, Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life under water, is the least funded of all the SDGs by a significant margin. The magnitude of blue finance flows (i.e., finance directed towards sustainable ocean-related activities) is currently too small to meet the scale of the problem.