My professional background as a finance lawyer and associate chartered accountant span across project finance, capital markets and development finance transactions. Driven by questions that has well budded in the course of my practice, I came to Building Bridges 2026 to understand how private money can be better steered towards sustainability challenges, and how finance can deliver real social and environmental impact alongside financial returns. The session on, “Unlocking the Future: Building Pathways for Ocean Finance”, answered that question aptly.

The ocean produces roughly half of the oxygen we breathe, absorbs about 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and takes up close to 30% of human-made carbon dioxide. Yet protecting life underwater is the least funded of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, receiving less than 1% of the money tracked against them. One widely cited 2020 estimate puts the need at about $175 billion a year, against roughly $25.5 billion actually spent. So, the question I took away was a simple one: “if the ocean is Earth’s life-support system, why do we still fund it like a side project?”

Given the large funding gap, many ocean initiatives fall into “valley of death” which is the stretch between a promising pilot project and steady revenue, where many ocean initiatives stall. Lenders struggle to price the risks. Who owns the land? Do local communities consent? How reliably can the carbon stored in mangroves be measured? Buyers hesitate to sign offtake agreements, until a project has a multi-year track record, yet a project cannot build that record without funding. Private investors supply only an estimated 8% of the money going to life underwater.

Catalytic capital as a bridge

The answer was not to wait for the market to mature, but to build a bridge. That is the job of catalytic capital: money that accepts more risk, or lower returns, so that others will follow. It includes grants, junior equity, and first-loss guarantees. Together they absorb early risk so that cautious institutional investors, such as pension funds, can step in. Success is increasingly measured by a “mobilisation ratio” which is how much private money each catalytic dollar unlocks.

The examples were practical. Restoring mangroves alongside sustainable shrimp farming gives farmers two income streams, harvests and carbon credits, while protecting the coastline. Partial guarantees help small fishing businesses borrow from local banks, invest in certification and reach premium export markets. A new World Economic Forum report, Catalytic Blue Finance, developed with the UBS Optimus Foundation and drawing on more than 220 deals from 2021 to 2026, made a point I liked, “the aim is not to subsidise every ocean project forever, but to use below-market funding strategically”.

Proof that it can work

Belize shows what is possible. In 2021 it carried out a “debt-for-nature swap”, in which a country’s debt is reduced in return for conservation commitments. The $364 million deal, arranged with The Nature Conservancy and backed by credit support from a US government development agency, cut Belize’s debt by an amount equal to 12% of its annual economic output, generated an estimated $180 million for conservation and locked in protection of 30% of its ocean. It even included the world’s first commercial insurance against catastrophe for a country’s debt, a vital feature for an economy exposed to hurricanes. Companies are taking notice too, increasingly helping to de-risk their suppliers because resilient suppliers protect their own business.

I realise, from the Building Bridges event that a handful of success stories cannot transform the market for ocean projects. Scaling up requires standardised project preparation, credible scientific baselines, clear engagement with communities and reliable revenue, so that investors can assess a pipeline of projects rather than one deal at a time. Mangroves show why the effort is worth it: beyond storing carbon, they support fisheries, protect coastlines and sustain livelihoods, and the World Bank’s blue carbon framework stresses the role of data, supportive policy and financing partnerships in turning those benefits into investable opportunities.

Counting what matters

Money raised is not the same as success. Mobilisation ratios must be read alongside harder questions. Are ecosystems recovering? Are fisheries becoming more sustainable? Are coastal livelihoods improving? Are carbon benefits independently verified and lasting? An investable ocean must also be fair and regenerative. That requires shared definitions of what counts as a sustainable ocean investment, backed by independent verification, so that capital rewards genuine progress rather than relabelling existing activity.

Looking back, I arrived thinking of the ocean’s funding gap as a shortage of money. I left seeing it as a shortage of structure as well: tiered risk, credible data and patient first movers. That matters to me as a lawyer. The agreements that lawyers like me draft decide who takes the first loss, who is repaid first and what happens when plans change. Seeing those clauses as part of a bridge between cautious capital and coastal communities has changed how I view my own work.

It has also sharpened my studies and ambitions. I want to build a career in development finance and African capital markets, and I am based in Nigeria, a country with a long coastline and many communities that depend on the water. The question I now carry is how to make conservation investable without losing sight of what investment must protect: a healthy ocean and the prosperity it sustains. “Every dollar of catalytic capital is a bridge, and the governments, philanthropies, development banks, lawyers and advisers who structure these deals will shape the next decade of blue finance”.

Author: Comfort Adeyemi, Master of Advanced Studies in Sustainable Finance, Impact Investing and Development

Guest Contribution: This article is brought to you in collaboration with the Geneva Graduate Institute, an Ecosystem Partner of Building Bridges 2026.

Photo Credit: Antoine Tardy

Note: The views, information, data and figures presented in Guest Contributions are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent views or position of Building Bridges. Information, data and figures provided by guest contributors have not been independently verified by Building Bridges.