World Wildlife Fund Banking on Cod: Finance Lab at the Social Finance Forum 2012
1. for a living planet
Raising the ‘Sunken Billions’:
Financing the transition to sustainable
fisheries*
Dr. Robert Rangeley
WWF-Canada
2012 Social Finance Forum: Measuring up
* Robert W. Rangeley & Robin W.D. Davies. 2012. Marine Policy 36: 1044–1046.
2. WWF’s Fisheries Financing Strategy
Objective: Generate new, long-term, and diversified sources
of revenue for fisheries conservation.
Grand Banks Pilot
WWF Global Initiatives
Creating Sustainable
Investment Standards
Reform fisheries subsidies
(eliminate subsidized
overfishing)
Develop investments for
fisheries reform & ecosystem
recovery
3. Problem: Current Practices are Unsustainable
Demand Supply
2.6 billion people 85% depleted, fully or overexploited
$100b industry 38% decline in fisheries abundance
demand increasing $50b lost per year
population growth increasing Production could meet future demand
demand for sustainable seafood Biodiversity benefits are 10-100 times
increasing the cost of maintenance
Fish in the year 1900 Fish in the year 2000
Christensen et al. 2003, Fish & Fisheries
4.
5. Solution: Investing in Nature
Sunken Billions:
One estimate put the Returns
value of recovered
Value fisheries of the Grand
Security
Banks ecosystem at $1 Socio-
billion per year. economic
Profitability
Fisheries
Productivity
Ecosystem
Recovery
Investment
5
Time
6. Our Work: WWF & Banking on Cod
Groundwork: We’ve done the basic research,
published papers and consulted widely.
Fishery Stakeholder relations: Range from
harvesters and processors - small and
corporate scale, to local and national experts,
as well as government agencies. There’s a
growing interest in the social value of the work,
in addition to the economic benefits.
Strategic Initiatives: e.g. Fisheries
improvement projects; Smart gear competitions
Goal: to create a self-sustaining financial
institution that will complement the economic
incentives created by sustainable seafood
markets. In the first proposed pilot, the Grand
Banks of Newfoundland, WWF is building a
case for investing based on the future value of
recovered fish stocks.
7. Model: Financial Institution for Recovery of
Marine Ecosystems
Enable fisheries and
INVESTORS
BUSINESS ecosystems to recover
PLAN
by providing financial
FiSHERY
security to fishermen
ENTERPRISES and businesses that
FIRME
depend on it.
$ $
Intermediary providing
RETURN ON
LOAN
loans to be repaid
INVESTMENT
when a fishery returns
to profitability.
Board and expert
committees keeping an
eye on the long-term
GROWTH IN IMPLEMENTATION
ECOSYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT
recovery goals.
SERVICES MEASURES Will recycle its capital
and pay interest from
RECOVERY &
the additional allocation
SUSTAINABILITY
of catches when
production increases.
8. Challenge: The Right Scale
New and innovative financing could be applied to Grand
Banks recovery.
BUT, conservation takes time, so capital would have to be
patient and expectations need to be reasonable.
SO, how do we scale-up the initiative? If we start too
small, it could take too long to achieve meaningful impact
and financial returns. Very large initial deals may fail to
attract investment for an untested initiative.
Key Question: What should an early win look like and how
could it be quickly leveraged within the pilot and to other
regions?
In a new publication we make a case for investing in large marine ecosystems based on the future value of recovered fish stocks. If successful we will solve one of the most pressing problem facing our oceans which is how to bridge the economically challenging transition period required to rebuild and maintain sustainable fisheries. This is part of a larger WWF global Smart Fishing initiative centred on our work on Grand Banks.Raising the ‘‘Sunken Billions’’: Financing the transition to sustainable fisheries. Robert W. Rangeley & Robin W.D. Davies. 2012. Marine Policy 36: 1044–1046. A b s t r a c tLong-term investment to drive the adoption of precautionary, adaptive and resilience-building fisheries management measures is urgently required, especially given the financially difficult transition period to reach sustainable fisheries. In this paper a case for investing in the recovery of large marine ecosystems is provided based on the future value of recovered fish stocks. It is argued that the current market-based sustainable seafood movement alone will not affect the scale of change needed and must be complemented by investment in fundamental conservation measures that will lead to the recovery of marine ecosystems and promote long-term sustainable use. A rationale for addressing the economically challenging transition period is provided and the basis of a new financial institution to finance the measures necessary for realising the economic, social and environmental benefits of large scale fisheries reform is proposed.
year 1900 where fish production is expressed as tons of fish per km2 where red is >11 tons and light blue is less than 1 ton. Recovery would move in this direction from the levels of depletion estimated to have occurred by the year 2000.
My starting point is where Robin left off explaining the concept of the FIRME model. Recall that the main purpose of the model, that we dubbed the “FIRME”, is to help drive recovery and sustainable fishery use of marine ecosystems through Implementation of Conservation management measures. The assumption is that this will result in Growth of Ecosystem Services.So, we are trying to make a case for investing in the recovery of large marine ecosystems based on the future value of recovered fish stocks with our first pilot -- the Grand Banks.I’ll show some steps involved to date.
