The most underfunded climate opportunities may be at sea

Abatify Summary

Nature & Climate Perspective

**The severe underfunding of marine-based climate solutions directly undermines the scalable preservation of Blue Carbon sinks and critical oceanic biodiversity. **

Capital scarcity limits the scientific baseline monitoring required to prove the additionality and robust quantification of marine carbon sequestration under ICVCM Core Carbon Principles (CCPs).
Ocean-climate solutions, such as seagrass and mangrove restoration, offer unparalleled carbon sequestration potential but require immediate capital to prevent ecosystem collapse.
Without sustained long-term funding, marine-based projects cannot guarantee the ecological permanence required to mitigate the systemic impacts of ocean acidification.

Market & Policy Outlook

The lack of dedicated ocean philanthropy and structured finance stalls the integration of marine assets into global compliance markets and corporate SBTi pathways.

The policy and methodology pipeline for ocean-based ITMOs under Article 6.2 and Article 6.4 remains underdeveloped due to a lack of early-stage catalytic capital.
The absence of standardized Blue Carbon market frameworks limits liquidity, preventing institutional investors from hedging risk with high-integrity marine offsets.
Corporates seeking to meet Scope 3 emissions targets are restricted by a shortage of CCP-aligned marine credits that satisfy rigorous SBTi Net-Zero criteria.

Ocean philanthropy remains a small field. Funding directed specifically toward ocean-climate solutions is smaller still. At last week’s “Sea Change” panel on ocean-climate solutions in Asia, convened as part of the Philanthropy Asia Summit, the discussion kept returning to this mismatch: the ocean is central to the climate transition, yet ocean-climate philanthropy remains a rounding […]

The most underfunded climate opportunities may be at sea

Abatify Summary

Nature & Climate Perspective

Market & Policy Outlook

Related Resources