On 23 June 2026 the UN Global Compact and the Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), convened a closed-door roundtable with central banks, financial regulators and supervisors at the Lloyd's Register Foundation Building in London — a move to bring monetary and prudential authorities formally into the Ocean Investment Protocol, a framework built around a sustainable ocean economy that UNEP FI projects could reach USD 5.5 trillion by 2050.
The session, held during UNEP FI's 19th Global Roundtable on Sustainable Finance (23–25 June, London), was organised in collaboration with the Greening Financial Regulation Initiative of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF GFRi). Participants reviewed draft recommendations informed by WWF's report, Ocean Health: An Introductory Guide for Central Bankers, Financial Regulators and Supervisors, with organisers stating that "discussions centred on the growing recognition that ocean decline represents not only an environmental challenge but also a material macro-financial risk with implications for price stability, sovereign creditworthiness and the resilience of the global financial system."
From theme to balance sheet
"By 2050, the market value of a sustainable ocean economy could reach USD 5.5 trillion and financial institutions, including banks, insurers and investors, have a central role to play both in terms of the nature-positive and climate-neutral opportunities they can finance, and the harmful impacts they can avoid," said Eric Usher, Head of UNEP FI, in the joint statement.
Sanda Ojiambo, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and CEO of the UN Global Compact, framed the update in plumbing terms. "The Ocean Investment Protocol serves as critical connective tissue across the sustainable ocean finance ecosystem, helping align companies, investors, insurance, regulators, central banks and policymakers around a shared framework for ocean resilience," she said. "By expanding the Protocol to include targeted guidance for central banks, financial regulators and supervisors, it recognizes that safeguarding ocean health is not only an environmental imperative, but also a financial stability issue. The update importantly highlights that many of the tools needed to assess and manage ocean-related risks already exist within the financial system."
What the regulators are being asked to do
The draft recommendations push central banks and supervisors to incorporate ocean-related risks and dependencies into supervision, stress testing and risk frameworks, and to align monetary and prudential tools with the transition to a sustainable blue economy. Maud Abdelli, Initiative Lead of WWF's Greening Financial Regulation Initiative, said the framework "comes at a pivotal moment, inviting central banks, regulators and supervisors to play a more active role in advancing a sustainable ocean economy. Through collective action and guidance, we can build a more consistent approach to assessing ocean-related risks, strengthen financial resilience and help ensure that financial flows support, rather than undermine, the ecosystems on which our economies depend."
The Ocean Investment Protocol itself was first launched ahead of the third UN Ocean Conference in June 2025, as a joint product of UN Global Compact and UNEP FI's Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative. It set out practical guidance for investors, insurers, lenders, governments and development finance institutions to align capital flows with Sustainable Development Goal 14. The June 2026 update is the first formal extension to public financial authorities — the only actors with the supervisory remit to translate guidance into binding capital and disclosure expectations.
OceanVines lens
The signal here is structural. Until 2026, ocean finance frameworks largely targeted private balance sheets and project pipelines. Pulling central banks into the Protocol moves ocean risk from corporate sustainability into the same regulatory category as climate risk — a category that is now embedded in capital adequacy, stress tests and bond eligibility across most advanced jurisdictions. For Hong Kong and Asia-Pacific investors, the operational read is that ocean-related disclosures and risk weights are likely to follow the same supervisory path that climate disclosures took between 2015 and 2024.
The UN Global Compact convenes more than 25,000 participants across over 100 countries through five regional hubs and more than 70 country networks, and UNEP FI's membership covers a meaningful share of global banking, insurance and investment assets. A unified Protocol that reaches both sides — the regulated and the regulators — closes a long-standing gap in ocean policy implementation. OceanVines exists to illuminate the inner sparks of every life we touch through our efforts in ocean conservation and education, and credible ocean finance is what keeps that work from being charity in a vacuum.
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