During an address at the Blue Finance Roundtable at COP26, Palladium announced it would be joining the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) as a full member.

As part of the UK government’s call to action to restore Ocean health and resilience, Palladium was invited to the Roundtable to discuss recent commitments to help mobilise capital towards the global ocean finance architecture, such as its ongoing partnership with ORRAA to support coastal resilience through investments into nature-based solutions. The importance of the oceans and its impact on some of the most threatened communities on Earth was the focus of the roundtable co-hosted by the UK COP26 Presidency and ORRAA.

ORRAA, a multi-sector, multi-government coalition, which has incorporated actors across financial institutions, environmental organisations, civil society groups, and other stakeholders from the Global South, is building resilience for vulnerable coastal ecosystems through innovative finance and insurance products focused on the blue economy.

In the runup to COP26, ORRAA launched its #BackBlue Ocean Finance Commitment, an initiative to drive investment at greater scale into nature-based solutions serving coastal and marine ecosystems. Among its first backers are Palladium, AXA, and Willis Towers Watson.

At the roundtable, Palladium Managing Director Steven van Weede noted, “The mission of this Alliance is close to ours, which is to develop and deliver positive impact solutions, bringing innovative solutions to the world’s most challenging problems.”

As a full member of ORRAA, Palladium will now help the Alliance develop its approach to global ocean finance at scale.

Investing in the Blue Economy

Palladium’s new role with ORRAA amplifies its ongoing support to the Alliance and its goals. The Alliance has enlisted Palladium to lead the design of an innovative financial architecture that will help drive investments and scale capital into solutions that will deliver positive outcomes in coastal resilience.

Over the last six months, Palladium has worked with ORRAA to identify the needs and opportunities in the market, and in the coming months Palladium will design the “Blue Resilience Clearinghouse.”

The Clearinghouse will operationalise an approach to pioneer a marketplace for blue resilience products that support grassroots and small- and medium-sized enterprise-led Ocean interventions. These products will also incorporate technical assistance to enhance the impact of the initiatives, as well as ensure that transparency and disclosure are accounted for in each transaction.

“Today’s commitments show the growing momentum behind investment into coastal and ocean nature-based solutions to build resilience and reduce risk,” added Karen Sack, Executive Director of ORRAA.

“A new global ocean finance architecture is needed to enable the significant scaling of investment into this is space from the 10s and 100s of millions into the billions and trillions. Today was a welcome first step,” she concluded.

Palladium will be working with partners including the WWF, Bank of America, and Convergence, among others, to design the Blue Resilience Clearinghouse and accelerate private investment into solutions that enhance the resilience of coastal communities and their surrounding ecosystems.

For more information, contact info@thepalladiumgroup.com.