Photo by Denys Nevozhai
The UK has committed £13.9 million to international programmes tackling ocean protection, coastal resilience and plastic pollution, with Marine Minister Emma Hardy announcing the funding at the eleventh Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya. The money is channelled through the Blue Planet Fund, the UK’s flagship ocean financing vehicle, which marks its fifth anniversary this year.
Where the money is going
Three programmes will share the allocation. PROBLUE, the World Bank’s blue economy multi-donor trust fund, receives £6.7 million; the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) gets up to £2.2 million; and the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP), the World Economic Forum’s flagship anti-plastics initiative, has been allocated £5 million. Together with previous commitments, the UK’s investment in the three programmes now exceeds £86 million since 2021.
Resilience on the ground
In São Tomé and Príncipe, one of the world’s smallest and most climate-exposed nations, UK-backed PROBLUE funding is reducing flood risk for more than 800 households and supporting 2,000 people through job-focused interventions. Resource Media reports that an estimated 20,730 people, roughly one in ten of the population, have benefited from the coastal resilience work so far, with each pound of UK grant funding understood to leverage several times its value in further World Bank investment.
Off the Kenyan coast, ORRAA-backed work in Vanga Bay is developing one of the world’s first marine biodiversity credit schemes in the global south, creating an income stream for coastal communities tied to seagrass restoration. According to Resource Media, the scheme bundles carbon and biodiversity credits under the Plan Vivo standard.
What the funders said
Hardy said the funding “reaffirms the UK’s position at the forefront of international ocean protection,” adding: “As climate pressures on our oceans intensify, investing in the resilience of coastal communities is not only the right thing to do, but essential.” She described the human stakes behind the figures, saying: “Behind every statistic is a community better protected from storms, a mangrove forest pulling carbon from the atmosphere, a family no longer at risk of losing their home to rising seas.”
Karen Sack, Executive Director of ORRAA, said the Blue Planet Fund “has been instrumental in supporting ORRAA’s work in developing an investable finance and insurance product pipeline that supports the resilience of climate vulnerable coastal communities in the Global South, and in building the Alliance.” She added: “This latest wave of funding will be critical as we double-down and scale-up vital action for the health of the Ocean and the communities it supports.”
Clemence Schmid, Director of GPAP at the World Economic Forum, said the UK’s continued backing had helped the partnership grow “into the world’s largest multistakeholder platform tackling plastic pollution,” and welcomed the launch of a new National Plastic Action Partnership for Kenya at the conference, calling it part of efforts to “unlock investment, create jobs and accelerate the transition to a circular plastics economy.”
UK Special Representative for Nature Ruth Davis OBE said the investment would deliver “real, measurable benefits for marine nature, from seagrass meadows to coral reefs that shelter extraordinary biodiversity,” and that building viable finance mechanisms for marine protection was “essential” to halting ocean decline.
Coral reefs and a packed diplomatic calendar
While in Kenya, Hardy also signed a High-Level Global Commitment on Protecting Climate Resilient Coral Reefs on behalf of the UK and its Overseas Territories, building on existing UK support for the Global Fund for Coral Reefs. The announcements come ahead of a dense run of ocean and environment diplomacy, including the first Conference of the Parties to the High Seas Treaty, which entered into force in January 2026, alongside CBD COP17 and UNFCCC COP31, both due later this year.
GPAP’s expansion is set against a difficult backdrop for global plastics diplomacy: Resource Media notes that negotiations on a global plastics treaty have stalled since successive rounds of talks failed to reach consensus in 2024 and 2025, even as GPAP itself claims to have mobilised more than $3.1 billion (around £2.4 billion) in waste management investment across its 25 national partnerships since 2018.