“When I think about my grandfather, and I think about his legacy. It’s more a legacy of problem solving than anything else,” says Philippe Cousteau Jr, founder of Voyacy Regen, NGO Earth Echo, renowned story-teller and filmmaker. 

“I think about myself fundamentally as a problem solver, and we face very serious problems in the ocean. It’s no surprise, and one of those problems is the wholesale collapse of the most biodiverse and one of, if not the most important ecosystem on the planet, and that is coral reefs,” Cousteau says. 

Carrying his prestigious family legacy forward, Cousteau sees a solution to coral reef collapse in blue tech, through his company Voyacy Regen. The project aims for the large-scale building of 2,500 kilometres by 2050m in order to restore large swathes of ecosystems, protect the coastal communities that rely on them, and strengthen global climate resilience.

To date, humanity has restored a total of just one square kilometre of coral reefs.

Cousteau is acutely aware of the lack of financial investment in environmental initiatives – particularly in the ocean space. And that lack of investment sits alongside increasing government anxiety about the hundreds of billions of dollars of damage caused by storm surges, hurricanes and typhoons,

Making projects financially viable investments – despite sitting far from the romanticised ocean explorer image existing of the Cousteau name in popular culture – is in Phillipe’s view, critical to actually enacting the climate-focused projects that can turn the tide in the fight against global warming. 

“The idea that markets and money are the enemy is naive and counterproductive. I would love to live in a utopian world where everybody sings Kumbaya and we all do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do,” he says.

“I believe in protecting nature for nature’s sake. If the majority of people, markets, companies and governments believed that we would not be in the situation that we’re in,” he adds gravely.