Healthy oceans are inextricably linked to global prosperity. Aside from helping to mitigate climate change, ocean ecosystems support the food security and livelihoods of billions of people. However, our oceans are under serious threat.  Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a critical role in restoring ocean health as they represent 70% of employment and 90% of total enterprises in developing countries across all sectors of the Blue Economy. Yet, SMEs in Asia face an estimated $2 trillion finance gap.

As part of ADB’s first Healthy Oceans Tech and Finance Forum, this spotlight session presented SME BlueImpact Asia, a blended finance platform for SME Blue Economy projects jointly developed by ADB with UNEP and UNDP, leveraging the experience made by BlueInvest Europe, a similar platform recently launched by the European commission.

The session showcased the concept of the platform and how it can be implemented in Asia. To ensure that the SME BlueImpact Asia will reach its full potential and create the expected socio-economic, environmental, poverty reduction, and gender balance impact, stakeholders representing development partners, SMEs, and investors shared their perspectives and recommendations. The discussion covered factors critical to the success of this initiative, such as use of digital technology and de-risking strategies. Concrete initiatives were presented which confirm the presence of numerous Blue Economy SME projects that require financing and can be aggregated in a pipeline of bankable, scalable and replicable transactions across developing Asia. Various asset managers and investors have included Blue SME projects in their investment strategies and showed interest to support SME BlueImpact Asia by matching catalytic funding.