The Ocean Has a Capital Problem: Connecting Proven Solutions With Finance
About the Session
The ocean is present at every climate conversation as a symbol of what we stand to lose. It is rarely present as a system with actors, accountability, and investable solutions. That gap is costing us time.
Solutions exist. Organizations are already intercepting plastic in rivers before it reaches the sea. Technology companies have built and are operating subsea desalination systems and seaweed-based packaging. Community-led governance models are protecting coastal ecosystems in the Pacific, in small island states, and along coastlines that rarely appear in major climate programs. The problem is not that the ocean lacks answers. It is that capital, accountability, and decision-making remain organized around a different set of priorities.
At the same time, the communities living closest to a changing ocean are absorbing costs they did not create. Coastal populations in small island developing states navigate sea-level rise and ocean acidification with limited access to the international climate finance those risks should unlock. Remote island communities like the Andaman and Nicobar Islands receive marine debris generated by distant economies, with little infrastructure to manage it and little recourse against the systems that produced it. The distance between where ocean value is created and where ocean costs accumulate is not accidental. It is structural.
That structural gap shows up in climate finance too. Ocean risks are among the fastest growing and least insured. Parametric insurance, anticipatory finance, and risk-sharing mechanisms that are now standard in other parts of the adaptation landscape have barely reached coastal and ocean communities. The ocean sits in the wrong funding bucket for almost every institution that could help.
This session brings together people working across ocean technology, plastic accountability, SIDS climate finance, community governance, conservation philanthropy, and risk financing to ask a harder question than ""how do we save the ocean."" The question is who gets to shape the decisions, who bears the costs, and what it would actually take to connect proven solutions with the capital and accountability structures they need to reach scale.
Discussion Group Leaders
Arundhati Prasad is Founder, Creative Lead at Designed for Good, Zero Waste Carnic, advancing research-led and community-centered solutions at the intersection of gender, climate, and governance.
Ebrima Saidy is Chief Executive Officer at Blue Ventures Conservation, advancing community-led marine conservation and sustainable coastal livelihoods.
What to Expect
A working conversation structured around short provocations from different parts of the group, covering the investment case for ocean technology, the accountability gap in plastic and waste, what SIDS and Pacific communities need from climate finance, and where risk financing is missing. The emphasis will be on the structural reasons capital is not moving, not on the case for why it should. Participants will be expected to contribute from their own experience and leave with a sharper picture of where different actors could intervene.
Who This Is For
This session is for ocean technology founders and investors, conservation funders, climate and adaptation finance practitioners, SIDS and Pacific community leaders and advocates, plastic and circular economy practitioners, risk and insurance professionals, and policymakers working on ocean governance who want to move the conversation from recognition to action.
What You Will Get Out of It
A commercial lens on ocean technology that goes beyond conservation framing, grounded in companies already operating and earning
A clearer picture of the accountability gap between where plastic and waste are generated and where they accumulate
Perspectives from SIDS and Pacific communities on what climate finance access actually requires for those most exposed to ocean change
Practical thinking on where risk financing, insurance, and anticipatory finance could reach coastal and ocean contexts where they currently do not
Connections across ocean technology, philanthropy, governance, and finance that rarely share the same room