Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance
News
Karen Sack, Executive Director and Co-founder
Chip Cunliffe, Senior Director and Co-Founder, Innovation and Pipeline
Park benches are brilliant places to trigger big ideas. They are also a big part of ORRAA’s history.
The 2018 Ocean Risk Summit in Bermuda sparked ORRAA’s inception. 200 leaders from the finance and insurance sectors, governments, non-profits, and academia came together for the first time to discuss critical emerging ocean risks like biodiversity loss, extreme storms, overfishing, and pollution.
Ocean Risk Summit, Bermuda, 2018
This Summit, led by insurer XL Catlin (which later merged into AXA Group as AXA XL) and NGO Ocean Unite co-founded by Sir Richard Branson and José María Figueres, focused on what these risks meant in terms of food security, national security, potential stranded assets, migration and coastal community resilience. It highlighted how many issues were being lost in translation; there were less than a handful of finance products focused on driving finance or insurance into this space; and a constellation of ocean risks and hazards coupled with vulnerabilities of coastal communities from small villages to large cities, were quickly emerging and required action.
Karen & Chip, Climate Action Summit, New York, 2019
A month later, we met on a park bench in Washington, D.C. Reflecting on the incredible discussions – as well as disconnects – at the Summit. We realised it had to be followed up by action, and we sketched out an idea.
The result was the formation of ORRAA: to create a unique multi-stakeholder Alliance fostering the development of an investable finance and insurance product pipeline to prove that investing in coastal and ocean resilience and biodiversity regeneration in the Global South was a workable proposition. As ORRAA has grown, we also have learned that this is not in itself enough, and that we need systemic change: to work from beachfront to boardroom and build out a capital market for the Ocean. And this is the course we have set.
Karen & Chip, Climate Action Summit, New York, 2019
The journey ORRAA has taken over the past five years has taken us from, New York and Glasgow to Sharm El Sheikh and from threatened but vibrant coastal communities from Tanzania to the Philippines. It is one of learning, collaboration, growth and change.
This path, in essence, mirrors that of a startup:
Seed Stage (2018-19) – ORRAA received a seed grant of USD$1.9 million from the Government of Canada, which jumpstarted our development in 2019. This crucial funding enabled us to establish the Alliance alongside founding members – AXA, Bank of America, UNDP, the InterAmerican Development Bank, WTW, TNC, Rare, Ocean Unite, and the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) at Stockholm University. The GRP and Ocean Unite co-hosted ORRAA as we developed partnerships, honed our Theory of Change, and launched our first pilot projects. The Alliance gained notable recognition at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit and was endorsed by the G7.
Early Stage (2020-21) – By 2020, we had started refining our product offerings and expanding our funding base. The foresight of the Ocean Unite Board and support of its co-founders enabled us to transition Ocean Unite – a U.S.-based non-profit – into ORRAA Inc., the legal entity through which we could hire staff and organise our work.
Then another park bench – this time in London – helped us hone our product pipeline. The UK Government joined Canada as a cornerstone supporter, with both providing multi-year funding. ORRAA became a Race to Resilience initiative, Deutsche Bank became our lead global banking partner, we launched the Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge to incubate and mentor early-stage locally-led start-ups in Emerging Markets, and, we launched the #BackBlue Ocean Finance Commitment which calls for financial institutions and insurers to commit to drive sustainable investment into ocean and coastal resilience. Additional new donors helped propel ORRAA toward growth. We developed a three-year strategic plan and began to expand our team to deliver on the mission.
Karen & Chip speaking at COP26, Glasgow, 2021
Growth Stage (2022-24) – In 2022 we launched the Sea Change Impact Financing Facility or SCIFF – at the One Ocean Summit in Brest, France. The SCIFF is an open ocean financing architecture designed to drive at least USD$1 billion of private investment into coastal and ocean ecosystems. It is also a springboard from which to mobilize at least USD$2.5 billion of broader finance capital. Working with over 50 of the Alliance’s growing membership base, we identified the core principles and cornerstone financing instruments needed for the SCIFF, commissioning feasibility studies and then stress-testing those with our members to strengthen them further.
Karen and Chip on a visit to South African based project and member, Abalobi, 2023
Expansion Stage (2024 onwards) – As ORRAA moves into its Expansion Stage, we are focused on achieving our mission for people, climate, and nature. Our collaboration with France, Monaco, and Palau to deliver key investable initiatives for the June 2025 Blue Economy and Finance Forum, a UN Special Meeting taking place immediately before the third United Nations Ocean Conference, will be the starting point for a capital market for the Ocean.
When we talk about ORRAA today, with our over 100 members, we say that we are the incubator for Ocean Investment. We are:
- building the investable pipeline through our Product Pipeline and Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge
- accelerating investment action through the development of the Outrigger Fund, the only impact investment fund dedicated to ‘missing middle’ investments in Small Island Developing States
- constructing the key platforms including the Octopus Desk to match-make projects with investors, linking SMEs in developing countries with VCs and philanthropies; or connecting sovereign and corporate blue bonds with institutional investors and asset managers through our Blue Bond Accelerator.
- de-risking investment opportunities through the generation of innovative products like parametric insurance for coral reefs or wave breaks and microinsurance for small-scale fishers
- creating the Nautilus Ocean Guarantee Company, offering guarantees or a ‘promise to pay’ to drive local currency investments into regenerative and sustainable ocean economy projects and leverage more private sector finance; and
- developing the tools to ‘price the priceless’ and place nature’s incredible unaccounted-for economic subsidy onto balance sheets so that we look beyond financial returns and recognise both the value at risk and the social return on investment, in addition to financial returns
- our research, along with that of our partners, has demonstrated an ocean of investment opportunity to deliver positive change for people and the planet through radical collaboration
ORRAA’s journey is a testament to what can be achieved when we unite with a common purpose. From a spark at a summit to park benches in Washington DC and London, the frameworks, ideas, troubleshooting, on the ground delivery and joy that has delivered a global alliance for ocean resilience is inspiring finance and insurance action to protect and cherish the health of our ocean. And we are just getting started.
Here’s to another five years on this blue journey together and to achieving our mission by 2030 to drive at least USD$500 million of investment into coastal and ocean resilience through finance and insurance products; and to building the resilience of 250million climate vulnerable coastal people.
Whole ORRAA team meeting in Lisbon, 2024
