Beyond the shoreline: the relevance of the ocean to central banks
In June 2025, global leaders convened at the Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Nice and Monaco in the name of ocean conservation, demonstrating a significant shift for policymaking in 2025: the ocean is transitioning from an environmental concern to a macroeconomic imperative. In this commentary, Lea Reitmeier, Margerita Topalli and Irene Alvarado Quesada outline why central banks should acknowledge ocean-related financial risks, particularly in countries whose economies depend heavily on marine and coastal ecosystems.
Why do ocean-related financial risks matter?
In a keynote speech at the Forum, the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, described the ocean as our planetary life-support system and highlighted its relevance to central banks tasked with safeguarding price and financial stability. Yet, human activities driving the climate crisis and nature degradation are undermining marine ecosystems in ways that translate directly into macro-financial risks. For example, failure to limit global warming at 2°C could result in annual flood damages of up to US$14 trillion by 2100, far exceeding estimated adaptation costs. These risks are particularly acute in low-elevation coastal zones, with direct implications for mortgage markets, insurance portfolios, port infrastructure and tourism-dependent economies.
Lagarde emphasised that degradation of marine ecosystems could have “profound consequences for the global economy”, including price volatility and economic disruptions. Ocean-related risks therefore fall squarely within the mandates of central banks, not as environmental externalities, but as drivers of inflation dynamics, financial instability and impaired growth.
From environmental concern to macro-financial risk
Ocean degradation interacts closely with the climate–nature nexus. Rising sea levels, coastal erosion, marine heatwaves, fisheries collapse and pollution are not isolated environmental phenomena; they affect food prices, employment, trade, public finances and asset values. At the National Emergency Briefing on climate and nature in November 2025, leading UK scientists briefed members of the UK parliament on the escalating risks of climate change, with Professor Tim Lenton highlighting the threat of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapse and the danger of crossing irreversible climate tipping points, with far-reaching implications for weather patterns, productivity and economic stability.
While central bank policies cannot substitute for environmental regulations, their financial stability mandate positions them to play a critical complementary role. They bring expertise in assessing the financial materiality of risks, translating biophysical shocks into macroeconomic variables, and identifying system-wide vulnerabilities. This includes supporting the transition to a sustainable blue economy by ensuring that ocean-related risks are not overlooked in financial supervision, macroeconomic modelling and stress testing.
Since the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) published its first publication on the subject in 2023, central banks and financial regulators have stepped up their efforts to understand nature-related risks. However, these efforts remain largely focused on terrestrial ecosystems. Ocean-related risks are still insufficiently captured in data, models and supervisory frameworks, creating blind spots in financial oversight.
What central banks need: data, models and integration
To fulfil their mandates, central banks require reliable and timely data on how ocean degradation affects macroeconomic and financial variables. This includes understanding how coastal erosion, marine pollution or fisheries collapse propagate through balance sheets, labour markets and prices. Incorporating material ocean-related risks into analytical frameworks, alongside climate risks, is essential to avoid underestimating exposures and mispricing risk.
The experiences of Albania and Costa Rica illustrate both the challenges and the opportunities involved in closing these data gaps.
Albania: marine degradation as a systemic risk multiplier
Albania’s 427-kilometre coastline serves as the economic backbone of the nation, as recognised in the National Spatial Plan 2015–2030 and current government strategies. Tourism alone contributed 8.5% of Albania’s direct value added in 2019 (and up to 21% of GDP, counting indirect effects), while marine fishing and aquaculture provide income for coastal communities.
Yet Albania’s marine ecosystems are strained and face substantial risks that now have clear financial implications. Fisheries statistics show a 14.9% decline in total catches in 2024. This aligns with World Bank findings that up to 80% of fish stocks within Albania’s Exclusive Economic Zone are overexploited. Environmental hazards are compounding: rising sea levels have already eroded an estimated 150 kilometres of coastline, pollution impacts 55% of monitored bathing waters, and inefficient waste management is degrading fragile marine ecosystems. Marine degradation is now a systemic risk multiplier shaping the entire economy.
These pressures increasingly translate into financial risks. The Bank of Albania’s 2024 climate-related exposure assessment identifies “high” or “very high” physical risks from sea-level rise, storm surge and erosion for tourism assets, port infrastructure and fisheries borrowers. The report recommends integrating climate risk into banking stress-testing and recognising ocean-linked shocks as macro-critical variables within the supervisory framework.
Since 2020, the Bank of Albania has taken important steps by joining the NGFS, launching a medium-term Green Strategy, and collaborating with the World Bank to improve risk mapping and close data gaps. However, limitations remain. Geospatial data on coastal business exposure are incomplete, and the financial sector lacks consistent information on how marine degradation affects asset quality and credit risk.
Costa Rica: integrating the ocean into national accounting
Costa Rica presents a contrasting but complementary case. The country is bordered by both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, with a marine area spanning 572,877 square kilometres — more than 11 times its land area. This marine territory comprises 92% of the country’s total area and hosts 3.5% of the world’s marine biodiversity.
Costa Rica has achieved global recognition for halting deforestation and leveraging terrestrial conservation for sustainable tourism. However, this success has primarily focused on land-based ecosystems. Significant information gaps remain regarding ocean ecosystems, impeding the integration of ocean-related vulnerabilities into macroeconomic analysis and financial risk pricing.
To address this, Costa Rica is working towards developing an integrated national ocean account by 2030. Led by the Central Bank of Costa Rica (BCCR) in coordination with the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), the initiative aims to evaluate the current state and condition of the ocean as well as the ecosystem services it provides. Both the BCCR and MINAE are members of the National Council of Environmental Accounts. The work aligns with the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting — Ecosystem Accounting and the Protocol for Ecological Monitoring of Mangroves in Costa Rica, and will initially focus on mangrove ecosystems in one conservation area, before scaling up nationally.
This approach illustrates how central banks can directly support better risk identification by embedding ocean ecosystems into national accounting frameworks, strengthening the empirical foundations for macroeconomic and financial analysis.
Beyond risk: facilitating a growing, sustainable blue economy
Beyond their risk oversight role, central banks can also help catalyse finance for a sustainable blue economy. At the Blue Economy and Finance Forum, Lagarde highlighted natural capital approaches (like the system of environmental-economic accounting) as ways to promote investment in marine ecosystem conservation. In countries like Costa Rica and Chile, environmental accounting is a responsibility of the central bank, creating a direct link between ecosystem health and macroeconomic policy.
Ocean accounts are essential for tracking marine assets and informing adaptation planning, fisheries management and biodiversity strategies. Central banks can also play a key role in developing and updating sustainable finance taxonomies, defining harmful activities for brown taxonomies and identifying those that support a sustainable blue economy.
Mobilising finance: persistent gaps and emerging solutions
Despite growing recognition of ocean-related risks, investment in marine protection remains insufficient. In Albania, commercial lending to blue-economy sectors accounts for less than 1% of outstanding bank credit, despite very low non-performing loan rations in these sectors. This reflects a combination of a cautious risk appetite, driven by data gaps, and a shortage of bankable sustainable investment projects.
Supervisors can play a steering role by encouraging banks to collect targeted geospatial and sector-specific data, such as coastal erosion exposure in high-risk industries like construction, to close key ocean-related risk data gaps without imposing excessive reporting burdens. This would improve risk assessment and unlock financing where risks are well understood.
Costa Rica’s first blue bond provides a concrete example of how financial innovation can support marine protection. Launched in June 2024 through a financial partnership between Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, a state-owned financial institution, and IDB Invest, the private sector arm of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, the US$50 million issuance will finance blue economy projects in sustainable water and sewage management, plastic waste reduction and the circular economy. The bond aligns with the Social and Green Bond Principles and the Blue Bond Guidelines of the International Capital Markets Association.
Outlook
Reducing ocean degradation requires coordinated action across governments, environmental regulators, the private sector and central banks. For central banks, the priority is clear: ocean-related physical and transition risks must be identified, assessed and integrated into existing macro-financial frameworks.
The experiences of Albania and Costa Rica show that progress is possible, but uneven. Better data, stronger analytical tools and closer institutional coordination are essential to avoid blind spots in financial oversight. A forthcoming report on Albania will further examine how economic activities depend on and impact marine ecosystems, providing a foundation for more resilient financial supervision.
The authors would like to thank Elena Almeida for her helpful comments. The views expressed within this commentary are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of CETEx’s senior management or funders.