Ocean risks could raise food prices and weaken pensions worldwide

What is Ocean Solvency?

The report introduces “Ocean Solvency,” defined as the ocean’s capacity to continue providing the essential services on which human prosperity and economic stability depend. The concept broadens the unit of analysis from individual environmental hazards to the services supplied by the whole ocean.

Those services include climate regulation, food and water support, and the movement of goods through shipping. The report argues that decision-makers should ask not only whether a marine project or activity is environmentally acceptable, but whether the ocean can sustain these services under mounting pressure.

How could ocean degradation affect pensions?

A pension case study shows why. The analysis considers how ocean degradation could affect plan assets (money invested), liabilities (promised retirement benefits), and contributions (payments into a plan) simultaneously. Weaker investment returns, higher inflation, and pressure on employers and households could combine to threaten the adequacy of future retirement income.

Sandy Trust FIA, lead author, said the ocean remains largely invisible in economic and financial risk assessments, calling that omission a dangerous blind spot. “Ocean degradation does not remain offshore. It can transmit through food production, trade, insurance and financial markets—contributing to higher prices, greater pressure on household finances and weaker retirement outcomes,” he said.

Trust also said ocean recovery is possible, but governments and financial institutions must now translate commitments into delivery.

How are researchers and finance leaders responding?

Paul Sweeting FIA C.Act, president of IFoA, said ocean health should concern not only environmental policymakers but also governments, regulators, investors, and pension funds.

He noted that actuaries have created a Planetary Solvency Recovery Framework with academics and climate scientists. The framework (a method for using realistic risk assessments to support the stability and resilience of Earth’s systems) still needs coordinated application to oceans, he said, alongside restoration of ocean health and the services it provides.

Dr. Jesse Abrams, senior impact fellow at Green Futures Solutions at the University of Exeter, said that, as climate change and other pressures intensify, disruptions to ocean circulation (the large-scale movement of seawater), marine ecosystems, and food systems could trigger wider economic and financial instability. He warned that conventional economic models capture these interconnected risks poorly, leaving decision-makers insufficiently prepared.

Hunt, drawing on sailors’ observations, said The Ocean Race hoped the report would prompt stronger action from policymakers and the finance industry. She said it was not too late to change course and that the ocean could recover if society gave it the chance.

What changes are the report calling for?

The report urges governments, regulators, investors, insurers, and pension plans to treat ocean health as critical economic infrastructure (essential systems on which economic activity depends). It asks them to incorporate ocean-related systemic risk into strategic decision-making, scenario analysis (testing decisions against plausible futures), and long-term risk management.

The report also identifies a persistent “say-do gap” (the difference between international commitments and actual delivery). Implementation, enforcement, and finance, it says, have not yet matched the pace of the challenge.

Its five recommendations are:

• Adopt realistic risk-assessment frameworks that include ocean degradation, tipping points, and interacting systemic risks.
• Integrate Ocean Solvency into government, regulatory, and financial decision-making.
• Accelerate ocean protection and restoration through stronger policy, enforcement, and investment.
• Develop financial structures that channel capital toward ocean resilience and systemic-risk reduction.
• Close the say-do gap by turning existing ocean commitments into measurable delivery.

The report identifies grounds for optimism. Ocean ecosystems can recover when damaging pressures are removed, while investment opportunities in restoration and the blue economy (economic activity that depends on the ocean) are emerging. Those opportunities do not remove the need for faster policy and financial action.

The report’s test is immediate: whether commitments become measurable action before ocean degradation raises prices and weakens retirement security.