US, UK, Canada confirm their commitment to ocean resilience

United States’ investment in ORRAA

Following U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry’s announcement of U.S. support for ORRAA at last year’s ‘Our Ocean Conference in Palau’, ORRAA announced that the U.S. has become a full member of the Alliance and will sit on its Steering Council.

The U.S. also confirmed it is investing USD$1 million in three key ORRAA projects:

• A climate vulnerability assessment for Toamasina, Madagascar, through the Climate and Ocean Risk Vulnerability Index (CORVI), led by the Stimson Center and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
• ORRAA’s Coastal Risk Index (CRI) that uses ground-breaking modelling to calculate and map the protective benefits of mangroves and coral reefs.
• The third wave of the Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge 2023 (ORIC23) in collaboration with the Swiss Re Foundation, building a pipeline of community led investable projects that reduce ocean and climate risk Canada’s investment in ORRAA.

Canada confirmed as part of its CAD$9 million grant to ORRAA, that it will invest in projects that build coastal resilience in the Global South through innovative finance and insurance solutions.

The projects include:

• Rare to pilot weather index-based parametric insurance tools for small-scale fishers in the Philippines.
• The Mesoamerican Reef Fund to extend parametric hurricane insurance coverage to reef sites in Colombia.
• Blue finance to design a blended finance facility aimed at effective management of ‘bankable’ Marine Protected Areas in Belize, Cabo Verde, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Indonesia, Mozambique, Philippines and Tanzania.
• A seed grant to Comunidad y Biodiversidad to develop their PescaData app to connect small-scale fishers with investors in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia and Guatemala.
• Aqua-Farms Organization (AFO) to develop blue carbon credits to restore mangroves and support local communities in Tanzania.
• ABALOBI in South Africa to build the financial resilience of small-scale fishing communities with data, traceability, and market platforms.
• The Stockholm Resilience Centre to increase the visibility of women’s contributions to coastal fisheries across the Global South.
• WWF in the South-West Indian Ocean to understand financial flows into blue economy drivers and to identify key risks in transitioning to a sustainable blue economy.
• The Stimson Center and the Commonwealth Secretariat Blue Charter for rapid climate risk assessments using the Climate and Ocean Risk Vulnerability Index (CORVI) in Dominica and Mauritius.
• Seed funding to develop the concept of the Outrigger Ocean Impact Fund.

United Kingdom’s investment in ORRAA

The UK announced it is investing GBP£12 million to support ORRAA’s mission to drive USD$500 million of investment into coastal and marine natural capital by 2030.  The first project that the UK will be supporting is work to further develop Vessel Viewer, a tool for insurers driven by open data, that builds a picture of a vessel’s profile and behaviour to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. ORRAA has been developing Vessel Viewer with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and in collaboration with Global Fishing Watch and TMT.