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Jérôme de Bontin
Manager of Mekar
Financial Services

BLUE FINANCE
Investing

in sustainable development

There are many projects linked to ocean preservation but they are often

difficult to fund. How can we convince investors to back them?

There are plenty of projects linked to res- This gives us an idea of the area left to ex- Margaret Hepburn, CEO of Hepburn Bio
ponsible ocean development, but they plore... Care, demonstrated that it was possible
often struggle to gather funding. Beyond for cruise ships to not pollute the waters
contributions from States and philanthro- Helena Vines Fiestas, Head of Sustainabi- that they cross. Her company promoted a
pic organisations, receiving funding from lity Research and Policy for BNP Paribas, full range of green cleaning products with
investors and economic decision-makers underlined that the financial world consider the following goal: “Let’s make oceans
is a major challenge to support actions in climate change and ocean preservation great again”. After cruises, she is targeting
favour of ocean protection. as major topics as they are a risk factor hotels and other coastal tourist infrastruc-
at a global level. She encouraged tracking tures.
Business leaders, asset management ad- changes to economic sectors which de-
visers, venture capitalists... talked about pend on it, notably aquaculture. Finally, Joseph Stanislaw, Founder of
their experience in the specific fields of Cambridge Energy Research Associates,
transport, offshore renewable energy and The diversity and variety of company pro- promoted a system to recover energy from
sustainable fishing. Others talked about jects involved in environmental problems in renewable sources such as water, sun and
funding energy transition plans and mari- the ocean were demonstrated by the bu- wind. The objective is to convince new
time activities. siness leaders in attendance, each indica- markets to reduce production costs.
ting innovations in their own fields.
They were all introduced by Jérôme de All these initiatives to preserve the oceans
Bontin, who manages Mekar Financial Sébastien de Halleux (Saildrone) under- offer major prospects for significant deve-
Services. Before giving them the floor, he lined the importance of taking measure- lopment. A criterion which should be key
illustrated the vastness of the ocean and ments to improve protection. However for investors.
the projects to understand it better through exploring the ocean is difficult and ex-
Point Nemo. This point in the Ocean is the pensive. This led to his idea of designing
furthest point from any emerged land. Lo- saildrones, drones which are powered by
cated in the south Pacific, it is so isolated the wind, whilst being able to collect data
that the nearest humans are those on the worldwide, even in inaccessible locations
International Space Station! and regardless of the weather conditions.