UNEP FI Iberian Sustainable Finance Forum explores pathways to finance nature and resilience

The AIR Centre participated in the UNEP FI Iberian Sustainable Finance Forum, held on 29 September in Lisbon and hosted by Caixa Geral de Dep贸sitos. The event brought together financial institutions and key stakeholders to discuss emerging global risks, climate transition, nature-positive finance and sustainable investment strategies, fostering dialogue on how the financial sector can strengthen resilience and accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable future.

Valerie de Liedekerke, Head of the Ocean Policy & Stakeholders Engagement Programme at AIR Centre, joined the panel Scaling Finance for Nature, moderated by Ana Sena of UNEP FI. There,聽she highlighted that the ocean is the most underfunded part of an already underfunded nature economy: SDG 14 is the least funded of all the SDGs, and marine projects receive only around 9% of nature-based solutions finance. The issue, she argued, is not a lack of value but a lack of mechanisms to pay for it. She pointed to opportunities in reshaping existing public, water and maritime spending around coastal ecosystems such as coastal protection as infrastructure, and to blended finance (e.g. EU grants, EU backed guarantees and commercial bank debt in one structure) as the key to helping ocean ventures move from pilot to scale. An aggregation vehicle for small blue economy projects is needed.

She also presented BlueMissionAA2030, which supports the next phase of the Atlantic-Arctic Lighthouse under the EU Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters. Among its activities, the project is building a Financial Advisory Board of Mission Finance Ambassadors and a portfolio of investment-ready ocean projects, and she invited the financial institutions present to get involved.

By bringing an ocean perspective to the nature finance debate, the AIR Centre highlighted that marine and coastal ecosystems must be part of the solution to closing the nature finance gap. Through BlueMissionAA2030, it will keep building bridges between science, policy and finance to turn ocean restoration and protection into investable opportunities across the Atlantic.

[PC, 5 October 2026]

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