Can harnessing the economic potential of the oceans offer Africa a way to grow sustainably, or is it just business as usual with few real benefits for the environment or the poor?

This is the question posed by a special issue of the journal Political Ecology, edited by two Lancaster University researchers.

“The Blue Economy is an enticing concept which, like the Green Economy, promises to save the environment, boost economies and do it in socially just ways,” says Professor Christina Hicks, co-editor of the section on the Blue Economy whose current research focusses on small scale fisheries.

“Governments are jumping on board the idea, especially in Africa, but there is very little written about it in the academic literature. We wanted to explore how it is working in theory and in practice.”

Co-editor, Dr John Childs, from the Lancaster Environment Centre, who came up with the idea for the the Blue Economy issue, sees the oceans, which cover 75% of the Earth’s surface, as a new resource frontier where the battle for control of mineral and other wealth is being fought out.

He defines the blue economy as: ‘a set of practices, policies and discourses which aim to reposition the global oceans as pulling off two distinct functions, to generate economic growth while moving towards increased sustainability.’

“In this edition we ask whether these two functions are compatible bedfellows,” says John, whose current research focusses on natural resource extraction particularly deep-sea mining.

Lancaster University is home to the largest group of political ecologists in Europe: political ecology looks at the relationships between culture, politics and nature.

“One of things we wanted to tease apart in the special issue is who and what has the power in the blue economy,” says John. “The ocean is often seen as an apolitical, flat, inert space, but it’s an enormous volume full of marine life, performing functions for climate and earth systems not to mention the many different ways people are culturally invested in oceans.

“There are lots of ways human power plays out in the oceans, including relations between governments, indigenous peoples and corporations. One of the papers looks at a situation where there is a big clash going on between different industries in Namibia, the emerging phosphate mining lobby on the one hand versus very powerful, existing, largescale industrial fishing.”

In their introductory paper, John and Christina argue that governments and corporations are increasingly trying to secure access to the economic potential of the oceans through military or technological dominance, excluding weaker and poorer players from the benefits.

“You have to have a secure marine space if you are going to make money out of it,” said John. “It is also important to relate what is happening now to the legacies of European development in Africa, of colonialism, rampant dispossession and the transatlantic slave trade – the ocean had a large part to play in that.”

The seven papers are written by researchers at different stages in their careers, including two PhD researchers from Lancaster, one of whom, Rosanna Carver, has already won an award for her paper. They cover a wide range of issues and African countries, exploring how the Blue Economy is developing in different contexts, who wins and who loses, and the inherent tensions between its multiple aims.

“The papers in the special issue suggests that the Blue Economy is not a benign concept offering a win-win for the economy and the environment but another capitalist fix in which global capital is seeking to reproduce itself, to keep making money and create surplus, as we get to the point where much of planet’s land mass had been appropriated,” says John.

“The Blue Economy hasn’t yet built on any of the lessons from our experience of the development of ideas around the Green Economy, which emerged in the 1970s as a ‘solution’ to all our environmental problems,” said Christina. “We need to do things differently this time, to critique the concept while recognising the potential benefits. Getting papers like these to policy makers and managers in the region will help that dialogue.”

The Journal of Political Ecology is an open access journal. The special issue can be accessed here and includes the following papers:

Securing the blue: political ecologies of the blue economy in Africa John R. Childs, Christina C. Hicks

Blue Economy threats, contradictions and resistances seen from South Africa Patrick Bond

Subsistence marine fishing in a neoliberal city: a political ecology analysis of securitization and exclusion in Durban, South Africa Marc Ronald Kalina, Alexio Mbereko, Brij Maharaj, Amanda Botes

Resource sovereignty, marine phosphate mining and the blue economy in Namibia Rosanna Carver

Materializing the blue economy: tuna fisheries and the theory of access in the Western Indian Ocean Mialy Andriamahefazafy, Christian A. Kull

Networking the Blue Economy in Seychelles: pioneers, resistance, and the power of influence Marleen S. Schutter, Christina C. Hicks

Centering the Korle Lagoon: exploring blue political ecologies of E-Waste in Ghana Peter C Little, Grace Abena Akese