Issues of context, capacity and scale : essential conditions and missing links for a sustainable blue economy
Abstract
The blue economy has roots in the international arena of sustainable development and sets out to unlock opportunities for economy and society whilst protecting and enhancing marine environments. To date there has been no analysis of how this overarching intention for sustainability has influenced the rapid development of blue economy policies at national and regional scales. In this article, we analyse the synergies and conflicts between blue economy policies from a diversity of national and regional policies and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We show that to maintain critical alignment with targets for sustainability, place-based contextual development of blue economies that meet the needs of all actors is necessary. These needs relate to ensuring resilience against future environmental and political shocks, the maintenance of the ecological basis for thriving blue economies, and capacity development at all levels to support effective and equitable governance. Results indicate that co-production will be important to achieve sustainable blue economies.
Citation
Niner , H J , Barut , N C , Baum , T , Diz , D , Pozo , D L D , Laing , S , Lancaster , A M S N , McQuaid , K A , Mendo , T , Morgera , E , Maharaj , P N , Okafor-Yarwood , I , Ortega-Cisneros , K , Warikandwa , T V & Rees , S 2022 , ' Issues of context, capacity and scale : essential conditions and missing links for a sustainable blue economy ' , Environmental Science and Policy , vol. 130 , pp. 25-35 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.01.001
Publication
Environmental Science and Policy
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1462-9011Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Description
Funding: This work was supported by the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), One Ocean Hub (Grant Ref: NE/S008950/1).Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.