Designing a sustainable blue fund strategy

THE BACKGROUND

Mozambique has a coastline of 2,470 km and a diverse and productive continental shelf area of about 104,300 km2. It supports pristine ecosystems, high biological diversity, high endemism, and endangered species, and is of paramount importance for the country’s economy. However, the coastal and marine ecosystems of Mozambique are under several major threats, including overfishing, industrial and coastal development, natural resources exploitation, unregulated and damaging tourism practices, pollution, and weather extremes such and storms and cyclones. The interdependency and trade-offs between individual sectors of ocean economic activity require an integrated blue economy strategy as a mechanism to realize sustainable and equitable growth based on the ocean economy.

THE PROJECT

ProAzul, Mozambique’s Blue Economy Development Fund, lacked an overarching policy and strategy to promote investments in the national blue economy. The goal was to propose a well-defined action plan to operationalize the blue economy in Mozambique, create better institutional and intersectoral coordination, and propose specific blue economy investment principles and indicators. FINANCE FOR IMPACT advised ProAzul on the design of a blue economy strategy, including the formulation of investment principles and sustainability indicators.

THE RESULTS

Our strategy supported the development of innovative financing and investment solutions that could contribute to enhancing ocean conservation and the sustainability of the ocean.