Amid funding shortfalls to address ongoing ocean degradation, blue bonds are being designed to finance sustainable development and conservation projects in ocean and coastal areas via private sector investment. Blue bonds seek to deliver both positive environmental and/or social impact alongside a financial return on investment to investors. However, there has been limited academic scrutiny of these early initiatives to evaluate whether this rhetoric is justified. This article leverages 15-years of scholarship on green bonds to develop an analytical framework that is applied to five of the world’s first blue bonds. A comprehensive content analysis of sources such as blue bond project documents and secondary interviews is used to synthesise their characteristics, and consider trends related to their thematic scope, geographical scope, environmental impacts, and financial returns. Thematically, blue bond proceeds are channelled towards projects aligned with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 ‘Life Below Water’, the Blue Economy, and policy discourse around the ‘blue recovery’ from covid-19. These projects range from marine protected area (MPA) creation, to improved fisheries management, and potentially, oil and gas exploration. However, greater explanation of the logic through which project activities are expected to deliver impact and returns is warranted. Equally, impact measurement is often underwhelming, with many bonds targeting easy-to-measure outputs (e.g., area conserved) rather than outcomes and impacts (e.g., increases in fish abundance). While an alluring and useful financial innovation, greater disclosure on the individual projects and enterprises that blue bonds finance is necessary to validate their sustainability credentials and inform investor decision making.

在解决持续海洋退化的资金短缺的情况下，蓝色债券旨在通过私营部门投资为海洋和沿海地区的可持续发展和保护项目提供资金。蓝色债券旨在为投资者带来积极的环境和/或社会影响以及投资的财务回报。然而，对这些早期倡议的学术审查有限，以评估这种言论是否合理。本文利用 15 年的绿色债券研究成果，开发了一个分析框架，该框架适用于世界上最早的五只蓝色债券。对蓝色债券项目文件和二次采访等来源进行全面的内容分析，综合其特征，并考虑其主题范围、地理范围、环境影响和财务回报。从主题上讲，蓝色债券收益用于与可持续发展目标 (SDG) 14“水下生命”、蓝色经济以及围绕 covid-19 的“蓝色复苏”的政策讨论相一致的项目。这些项目的范围从海洋保护区 (MPA) 的创建到改进的渔业管理，以及潜在的石油和天然气勘探。然而，有必要对项目活动预期产生影响和回报的逻辑进行更多解释。同样，影响测量往往令人印象深刻，许多债券的目标是易于测量的产出（例如，保护面积），而不是结果和影响（例如，鱼类丰度的增加）。虽然是一项诱人且有用的金融创新，