Planet Ocean

I grew up in Montana, just a few hundred miles from a place called Pine Ridge Reservation. Pine Ridge is a significant location for paleontologists (it is a hotbed of fossil deposits) and for historians (it was host to important events in modern indigenous history). For geography enthusiasts, it is a curiosity. Pine Ridge is North America's "pole of inaccessibility" - the farthest point from any coastline on the entire continent.  

Growing up, that meant that the coast, in any direction, was at least 1,000 miles away. Perhaps because of this landlocked upbringing, I am awed by the scale of the ocean. Over 70% of the planet's surface is covered by it. Over 80% of the it has never been mapped by humans, let alone actually seen. And over 90% of its species, by some estimates, are still undiscovered. 

Yet our social and economic reliance on the ocean is impossible to overlook. Ocean industries directly employ some 40 million people, and over 350 million jobs can be connected to the ocean. Some three billion people rely on the ocean for food, mostly in developing countries, which also happens to be where about 97% of the world's fishermen live. Shipping is responsible for more than 90% of trade between countries worldwide. And the blue economy is growing rapidly. It will be worth US$3 trillion by 2030 - about 5% of global GDP.  

But despite its size and significance, the blue economy is a young sector. At IFC, we are working to help define it. We blazed a trail with green financial instruments, and we are doing the same again with blue, seeking out investments that marry ocean sustainability and ocean opportunity. We have already begun to do this with our blue loans, investments in blue bonds, and the launch of our blue finance guidelines, and we are looking forward to expanding this portfolio. 

Just like the continental pole of inaccessibility at Pine Ridge, there is also an oceanic pole of inaccessibility. Point Nemo, as it is called, is so far from any land mass that the nearest humans are often the astronauts flying overhead on the International Space Station. 

Periodically, as they race around the planet, those astronauts can see little else but blue on the surface. That itself, I think, is a beautiful encapsulation of the significance of the ocean: Simultaneously so vast and remote as to be virtually unknowable, but so central and all-present as to be our entire world. 

It is enough to inspire wonder no matter how inaccessible your origins.