INVESTING FOR SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL FISHERIES
Encourage Capital
Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Vibrant Oceans Initiative and The Rockefeller Foundation
2016 Executive Summary :: [42 pages]: http://encouragecapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Executive_Summary_FINAL_1-11-16.pdf

[Excerpts from Introduction and Conclusion]
INTRODUCTION
The earth’s oceans have been a source of sustenance and wonder to humankind since the dawn of time, supporting coastal populations for millennia and perhaps even playing a role in human evolutionary development.1,2 To this day, our reliance on marine resources remains profound. Seafood currently provides 17% of daily animal protein consumed globally, yet fish stocks worldwide are imperiled, threatening marine ecosystems, global food security, and the economic livelihoods of millions of fishers. In fact, only 8.5% of global landings are in fisheries certified as sustainable,3 while 40% of fisheries are considered to be overexploited or collapsed.4 Impact investors can play a role in saving these fisheries.

Research suggests that impact-focused investors have approximately $5.6 billion5 in capital to deploy over the next five years and have the means to dramatically reshape the world’s “blue economy.” To better channel the flow of this capital to the need and opportunity of restoring global fisheries, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Vibrant Oceans Initiative and The Rockefeller Foundation supported Encourage Capital (Encourage) to undertake research and publish this report, Investing for Sustainable Global Fisheries, which includes six Investment Blueprints, each intended to serve as a roadmap for the growing number of investors, entrepreneurs, and fishery stakeholders seeking to attract and deploy private capital to scale and accelerate fisheries reform. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Vibrant Oceans Initiative simultaneously funded Oceana and Rare to implement policy and community stewardship programs, respectively, in Chile, Brazil, and the Philippines as part of a strategy to simultaneously reform industrial and small-scale fisheries and attract capital to catalyze and sustain these efforts. Encourage Capital’s Investment Blueprints are designed to create a roadmap for private capital to further accelerate and scale success in each Vibrant Oceans country…

CONCLUSION
As the world’s population grows and becomes more prosperous, the demand for animal protein will continue to increase exponentially. Wild-caught seafood can — and should — continue to play an important role in meeting this demand, particularly since its production requires no land, needs minimal fresh water, and results in the lowest greenhouse gas emissions of any major animal protein.

Unfortunately, in the absence of sustainable management, commercial-scale wild seafood production could largely disappear. This outcome has the potential to meaningfully alter our relationship with the ocean, with massive ramifications for marine ecosystems, for the 30 million fishers and the 90 million people overall who rely on wild fisheries for employment and for global food security.

To date, philanthropic and government resources alone have proven insufficient to curtail overfishing on a global scale. As such, Encourage Capital’s Investment Blueprints seek to engage the interest of impact investors in funding companies and projects that generate financial returns from the protection and restoration of marine fisheries. Although the Investment Blueprints examine opportunities in only a small subset of the world’s fisheries, the strategies presented have the potential to be replicable across many, perhaps even most, species and geographies.

If these new approaches to seafood production prove successful in delivering durable financial and impact returns, we believe they could unlock much larger pools of private capital for marine conservation to catalyze and scale fishery improvement efforts. This outcome could fundamentally change the landscape of the seafood industry — protecting our oceans and providing an ongoing source of food and income for generations to come…