The Sea Change Impact Financing Facility (SCIFF) aims to drive at least USD$1 bn of private investment into coastal and ocean ecosystems by 2030, a springboard from which to mobilise at least USD$2.5bn of broader finance capital.
The SCIFF takes a systemic approach to building this new financing architecture – creating an investment ecosystem for sustainable initiatives, developing at speed and at scale, assembling it from individual projects to aligned platforms, and engaging investors and insurers through dedicated finance intermediaries.
This multi-layered facility will provide an architecture for the global coastal and ocean project financing space, while complementing and responding to efforts already underway including impact funds, NGOs, corporates and Multilateral Development Banks, as well as facilitating the entry of new partners. Each element will focus on impactful investable opportunities, thus helping to attract additional sources of capital; and providing concessional capital to de-risk and accelerate investments into coastal and ocean resilience. It also includes work on standards and guardrails.
The creation of this new ecosystem, together with ORRAA’s investments into scalable projects with the prospect of bankable returns, will enable the deployment of billions of dollars into nature-positive coastal and ocean resilience over the next decade.
The SCIFF is composed of three core integrated components.
First, it will establish a Blue Resilience Clearing House (“BRCH”) – a framework “marketplace” drawing on existing and emerging platforms to identify and select sustainable projects and effective project developers. It will link them to risk management expertise and potential investment pathways. The aim is to allow cost-effective transactional processes and innovative ecosystem services assessments, such as blue carbon and others, to help deliver value and economic opportunity. The BRCH will put specific guardrails in place to ensure that the supply and demand for such projects meets specific selection criteria and standards. The partner platforms aligned with the BRCH will range from innovative private and public sector initiatives, to experienced technical assistance partners.
Second, the Finance Umbrella will sit at the core of the SCIFF. Working with ORRAA’s finance sector partners, it will support a range of new investment formats including funds, facilities and mechanisms to attract significant funding from experienced investors, and also address specific opportunities and pathways into coastal and ocean resilience. It will focus on investment opportunities, such as catalytic finance into blue infrastructure projects, co-investment alongside existing impact funds into sustainable blue economy opportunities, and capital market transactions including blue bonds and resilience finance. Drawing on the wider resources of ORRAA members, the Finance Umbrella will also be able to blend various types of finance with different risk appetites.
Finally, the SCIFF’s Risk Transfer Platform (“RTP”) will focus on providing risk assessment standards, as well as existing and innovative risk transfer solutions, for coastal and ocean projects identified and/or developed by the BRCH or under the Finance Umbrella. Its aim will be to better enable investment by facilitating the transfer of risks which the project or investor is not willing to cover, to those better positioned to bear them in the private insurance sector.
