Coral reefs face threats from climate change and local pressures, but many initiatives designed to deliver conservation outcomes for them and the social-economic systems they support are limited by sustainable finance and the availability of funds over the long term. Conservation finance is viewed as part of a holistic approach to coral reef conservation that integrates science-based biodiversity, social, and economic solutions tailored to local socio-cultural, environmental, and economic conditions to ensure their effective design and implementation. Specifically, conservation finance is defined as the “mechanisms and strategies that generate, manage, and deploy financial resources and align incentives to achieve nature conservation outcomes” (Meyers et al. 2020). Increasingly, there are diverse finance solutions that could support coral reef conservation and associated community wellbeing.
