In response to the increasing global demand for resources and the economic pursuits that come with it, attention on the world’s oceans continues to grow. But how should marine resources be properly managed? The blue economy is the umbrella term that looks at the planet’s oceans from an economic perspective and refers to the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystems.
On one side of the coin are the exploitative activities and economic sectors, including fisheries, aquaculture, maritime transport, tourism, offshore renewable energy like wind and tidal power, and biotechnology. On the other side are marine conservation efforts.
Global platforms like the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Center for the Blue Economy have called for oceanic sustainability efforts.
In March 2024, the United Nations Environmental Assembly adopted a resolution on “strengthening ocean efforts to tackle climate change, marine biodiversity loss and pollution.” A press release issued by the European Commission after the session stated, “By submitting and negotiating the resolution, the European Union and its Member States reiterated their determination to play a leading role in protecting, conserving, restoring, and sustainably utilizing the world’s oceans.”
The concept of the blue economy is rooted in the recognition that the oceans are vital to human well-being and the global economy. Still, they are also threatened by overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. Therefore, the blue economy seeks to balance economic development with the need to protect and restore the ocean environment, ensuring that future generations can enjoy marine resources. The blue economy is increasingly seen as a crucial component of global efforts to achieve sustainable development and address climate change, particularly in coastal and island nations heavily dependent on marine resources.
Challenges in Defining the Blue Economy
There is no consensus on the definition of “blue economy.” The term generally refers to the purportedly “sustainable” economic activities associated with oceans, seas, and coastal waters. Yet, that’s where consensus on the concept breaks down. The blue economy requires a clear, widely agreed-upon definition before it can be applied appropriately.
The World Bank defines the blue economy as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.” The European Commission defines it as “[a]ll economic activities related to oceans, seas, and coasts. [It] covers a wide range of interlinked established and emerging sectors.”
According to the United Nations, the blue economy “comprises a range of economic sectors and related policies that together determine whether the use of ocean resources is sustainable” while emphasizing the need to protect life below the water. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stated thatthe blue economy applies to industries with “a direct or indirect link to the ocean, such as marine energy, ports, shipping, coastal protection, and seafood production.” The World Wildlife Fund acknowledges that there is no widely accepted definition.
Defining the blue economy is much more than semantics. Some people mistakenly believe that it has been intended to benefit capitalism. This is a widespread phenomenon and is not just limited to corporations. In some ways, it is similar to the misconceptions that arose from using the term green economy.
People who live far from the ocean may not fully grasp how much humans rely on the ocean for survival, including regulating climate, providing food sources, and generating oxygen, even if they don’t directly access it for daily needs. This can lead to a view of the blue economy as simply supporting coastal transportation, recreational activities, or ecotourism. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states, “Approximately half a billion people globally depend on coral reef ecosystems for food, coastal protection, and income from tourism and fisheries.” And yet, coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate due to ocean acidification fueled by the climate crisis. They are also being destroyed by harmful coastal development—development that could be part of the blue economy.
Development or Destruction?
The United Nations affirmed that the blue economy would assist in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—especially Goal 14, “Life Below Water.” This triggered a rapid expansion across all facets of the blue economy, with projections suggesting this trend would persist.
Marine economic activities include fisheries, aquaculture, maritime transport, coastal renewable energy, seabed mining, bioprospecting, marine biotechnology, and waterborne tourism. These activities harm marine health to some degree and contribute to many problems, including biodiversity erosion, ocean acidification, climate change, water and air pollution, and even noise pollution that threatens marine life, including whales and dolphins.
The corporate extractive sector, in particular, has been looking for new territories to extract minerals such as manganese, cobalt, copper, nickel, and rare earth elements. This has become increasingly problematic due to the risks involved in resource extraction. Though the ocean may seem like an unlimited expanse that profiteers exploit purely for financial gain, it has natural limits.
“[A]lthough scientists and campaigners have been warning of the consequences of our rampant exploitation for decades, time is now running out to protect our oceans,” Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana in the UK, and Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the Center for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, wrote in EuroNews in November 2023. “We like to think of our ocean as infinite, but the truth is, it cannot stand this industrial-scale exploitation.”
The Earth’s marine ecosystems are extremely valuable to the global economy. They deliver essential ecosystem services to life on the planet and provide sustenance for billions of people. More than 3 billion individuals depend on the ocean for their livelihoods. Most live in developing nations; humans and countless other species rely on healthy, thriving oceans.
Terminologies such as “green economy” and “blue economy” might seem promising but are often noted as cover-ups for harmful activities. “[T]he blue economy is not a benign concept offering a win-win for the economy and the environment,” said John Childs, a senior lecturer at the Lancaster Environment Center at Lancaster University, United Kingdom, and the co-editor of a special section in the Journal of Political Ecology that presented several papers on the blue economy.
Childs said the papers he reviewed suggest that the blue economy is “another capitalist fix in which global capital is seeking to reproduce itself, to keep making money and create a surplus. This is happening as we get to the point where much of the planet’s landmass [has] been appropriated.”
“If ‘greenwashing’ is the practice of making unsubstantiated or misleading claims about the environmental benefits of an action, then perhaps we need a new term—‘bluewashing’—to cover coastal and marine development initiatives which fail to deliver on their environmental and social promises,” wrote Nicole Leotaud, the executive director of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute, in 2017. “Personally, I’m tired of labels that confuse and mask the development principles we are seeking,” she added.
Threats to the Marine Ecosystem
Some protections benefit the oceans, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), established in 1982 to provide an international legal framework for using and protecting the marine environment. However, not all nations agree to these protections. Additionally, ocean-bordering countries have their own laws, creating a patchwork of often poorly enforced rules. Contested waters regularly result in tumultuous situations.
Many maritime crimes negatively impact oceanic health, such as illegal fishing or harvesting, ocean dumping, and polluting. In addition to overfishing, where necessary species are removed from the food chain, and accelerating biodiversity loss, unsustainable industrial development along coastlines has also contributed to ocean pollution. “All of these threats erode the capacity of the ocean to provide nutritious food, jobs, medicines, and pharmaceuticals as well as regulate the climate,” stated a 2020 article in the journal Nature. “Women, poor people, Indigenous communities, and young people are most affected.”
Climate change is another serious threat to our oceans. “[I]ncreasing sea levels and making the ocean warmer, more acidic, and depleted in oxygen,” the Nature article pointed out. The ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of excess gas trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but that is only a portion of the damage. “Unsustainable development along coastlines destroys coral reefs, seagrass beds, salt marshes, and mangrove forests,” which provide vital biodiversity reservoirs, sequester carbon, and buffer coasts against storm surges,” the article added. Because of human intervention, plastics, and nutrient runoff pollute the water and kill sea life.
We must not ignore the hazards of shipping. Sea vessels use heavy fuel oils that release soot, sulfur, and carbon dioxide, amounting to substantial emissions of some air pollutants and 3 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.
There are many parts of the ocean where life has died. These sections have layers of crude oil and have been contaminated to outlandishly unsafe levels.
A Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission report reveals that the “concentration of noxious chemicals, such as Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, exceed safe levels by a factor of 1 million according to some of the samples taken,” pointing to the impact of oil extraction in Bayelsa in the Nigerian Delta.
Even though significant oil spills receive much media attention, the ongoing oil flow into the sea represents the bulk of the problem. “Hundreds of millions of gallons” of oil enter our oceans yearly, but most evade media attention. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, only a fraction of that—5 percent—comes from what the U.S. Department of Commerce labels as “significant” oil spills.
Some of the most prominent damage to ocean ecosystems appears to come from deep-sea mining on a massive level, which destroys the seabed. It harms marine and aquatic ecosystems while impoverishing coastal communities that depend on fisheries and other resources. The kind of damage that it could cause is almost impossible to calculate, especially since deep-sea mining is a relatively new endeavor.
In a press statement in August 2024, Dr. Enric Sala, the National Geographic Explorer in Residence and Pristine Seas founder, said:
“Giving the greenlight to deep sea mining would open a Pandora’s box of unknown impacts. Mining the seabed will inevitably affect fragile sea life that we barely know. And a [July 2024] study … showed that deep-sea polymetallic nodules produce oxygen in total darkness, which may be key to ocean health. The more we look in the deep sea, the more we discover. Rushing to mine the seabed will surely go down in history as an environmental disaster we should have stopped before it started. It is short-sighted to destroy, in minutes, ecosystems that have taken millennia to develop. Countries worldwide have so much more to gain by protecting vital parts of the ocean than signing them away for short-term profit.”
Nnimmo Bassey is the director of the ecological think tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), and a member steering committee of Oilwatch International.
