Reaffirming the central role of business in maintaining a healthy ocean, the report focuses on companies' attention to marine and coastal ecosystems, both in terms of awareness of their pressures and actions taken to address them. Moreover, going beyond a mere risk mitigation perspective, it shows how companies can create value by addressing ocean-related challenges through investments in innovative nature-based and technology-based solutions for ocean protection and restoration.

Developed by One Ocean Foundation in partnership with SDA Bocconi, McKinsey & Company and CSIC (the Spanish National Research Council), the report uses an innovative methodology that combines two artificial intelligence-based approaches to analyse the behaviour of over 2,400 companies in 20 countries and across 17 industries, reviewing over 300,000 pages of documents.

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Some of the main highlights include:  

•The importance of the Blue Natural Capital as the guiding principle underpinning a nature-positive economy.

• Companies are responsible for exerting direct and indirect pressures on Blue Natural Capital and therefore developing awareness of these pressures is crucial to advancing ocean sustainability. 52% of companies are aware of the potential pressures of their industries on the ocean, showing an upward trend with respect to 2019. However, the SDG14 remains one of the least mentioned SDGs.

• Among the companies directly addressing ocean-related topics, 50% approach them from a risk mitigation perspective, 35% both as risk mitigation and as an opportunity, and only 15% are focused on business opportunities.

• Companies are starting to recognize the potential of embracing "blue" as an opportunity. In particular, the more companies’ maturity increases, the more the organizations address ocean-related topics not only in terms of risk mitigation but also as an opportunity.