Our oceans have been generous to us. They generate oxygen, help protect us from the sun’s heat, provide food and livelihoods to millions of people, and serve humanity in myriad other ways.

In return, we are destroying these nurseries for marine life by overharvesting fish and polluting the waters with untreated sewage and plastics.

Marine ecosystems are now threatened by extinction. Over the past 50 years, the world has lost nearly half of its coral reefs and mangrove forests, while marine populations have halved and global fish stocks depleted by a third.

Ocean dead zones – enormous areas where fish can no longer survive and breed –will expand dramatically as nitrogen fertilizer flows unabated at a rate of about 11 million metric tons per year. If trends in illegal, unregulated, and underreported fishing continue, there may be no stock left in our region for commercial fishing by 2048.

Clearly, investments in recovering and maintaining a functioning marine ecosystem are long overdue. If they arrive, they can form the foundation of a sustainable “blue economy”. With the ocean economy accounting for sizeable parts of gross domestic product in many developing economies of Asia and the Pacific, we need to work together on ways to find these investments and change the way we treat the oceans.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of investment opportunities which can place the current ocean economy on a sustainable footing and reduce the harmful impact of human activities. So far, however, investments have fallen short. Currently less then 1% of the total value of ocean economy is invested in sustainable projects.

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