Rethinking Risk and Capital in the Blue Economy
Reflections from New York Climate Week 2025
Author
Carey Renn
Full disclosure: I may be a systems-thinker, but I’m a finance neophyte. Terms like catalytic capital, blended finance, and market cap feel like an entirely new language — one I’ve had to “Duolingo” my way into understanding. At NY Climate Week, I immersed myself in sessions on impact investing within the emerging blue economy, which many investors still see as a side play — overshadowed by more established sectors like agriculture and energy. So how do we change that?
What struck me most wasn’t a shortage of ideas — far from it — but the persistence of outdated notions of risk that limit how capital is accessed in this sector. As with so many systemic challenges, progress in ocean investment depends on partnerships and weaving together diverse forms of finance to provide runway for innovative ideas that can become viable market opportunities.
For background, Ted Janulis, founder and CEO of Investable Oceans provided a great overview of the three primary buckets of capital — traditional market investing, blended finance (public, philanthropic, private capital), and donor funding — as well as the expected returns for each. It’s important to understand that as we move from market investing towards donor funding, risk increases and expectations for return decreases with that risk.
100% Fish Model
A great example of this idea of partnership creating market opportunity is Codland, a spin-off from the Iceland Ocean Cluster. Originally founded with a combination of public funding and support from a fish drying company, Codland built a portfolio of products from cod parts that were once discarded, including marine collagen for health supplements, omega-3 oils, animal feed, and even cosmetic applications. By aligning public R&D funding with private entrepreneurship, Codland reduced the financial risk of early experimentation and created multiple revenue streams — a model that made it easier for investors to come on board once the science was proven.
Hearing Dr. Thor Sigfusson, founder of the Iceland Ocean Cluster, describe the “100% Fish” model, and how entrepreneurs transformed a single cod from a $12 fillet into more than $5,000 of diversified value, underscored the power of circular thinking. When we look at the totality of the input instead of a single-product lens, we unlock a portfolio of revenue streams while decreasing waste. For me, this example crystallized how diversification can help capture value and fundamentally alter the financial profile of an ocean venture.
Panelists repeatedly emphasized the point that to make the blue economy investable at scale, we must rethink the composition of the capital stack as part of an orchestrated symphony. We need early donor capital to jumpstart entrepreneurs, blended capital to support companies as they scale and compete, and finally, once viability is demonstrated and risk is reduced, traditional investment to accelerate growth.
Marine Debt-For-Nature Swaps
Marine debt-for-nature swaps are a great example of partnership limiting risk. Well-designed government and development-backed financing can reduce the risks of conservation projects, making it easier for private investors to join in at scale. For instance, in 2018, the Seychelles pioneered the Blue Bond, a $15 million sovereign bond, backed by a World Bank guarantee and concessional financing from the Global Environment Facility, that would channel capital into sustainable fisheries, ultimately boosting economic opportunities for small-scale fishers and their families. Similarly, Belize underwent $364 million in debt restructuring tied to marine protection, showing how national debt instruments can be transformed into conservation tools.
These sessions made it clear to me that the bottleneck isn’t ideas — it’s the design of capital flows that are fit for purpose.
So, through thoughtful and transparent conversations during Climate Week, I began to understand not only the range of financial structures needed to fuel impact, but also the sequencing: we need to blend capital early and separate it later. Grants, guarantees, and first-loss positions can help validate science and supply chains, after which projects can refinance into commercial debt or revenue-based finance once the economics are proven. We should be underwriting in circles, not silos — valuing clusters of interconnected businesses instead of betting on any single SKU. And we need to recognize government and multilateral tools not as peripheral, but as foundational anchors that can draw in private capital and help establish blue assets as investable.
My main takeaway from Climate Week is this: ocean deals don’t fail for lack of purpose — they fail because the capital stack isn’t aligned to the opportunity. If we update our definitions of risk and value, the blue economy stops looking niche and starts looking like one of the most diversified, resilient, and opportunity-rich investment of this decade. The 100% Fish model from Iceland proves it. And there are many more investable opportunities already seeded by donor funds.
The challenge now is to bring this sector more onto the radar of mainstream investors, policymakers, and philanthropies who already deploy these tools in agriculture, energy, and health. As a human-centered design consultancy focused on food systems, our role is to translate these financial models into actionable pathways, convene unlikely allies, and ensure that the communities on the frontlines of ocean and food systems change are not left behind. If agriculture has shown us how catalytic capital can scale markets, the oceans are ready for their turn — provided we design capital flows that match the scale of the opportunity.
