As a setting for global trade and commerce, and as a significant source of food and energy, the ocean’s contribution is already important. This century, it is likely to become an economic force. The drivers are many and varied, but have their origins in growing familiarity with the ocean environment; new technologies that make it feasible and economically viable to tap ocean resources; longer-term growth and demographic trends fuelling; the search for food security and for alternative sources of minerals and energy; seaborne trade and rapid coastal urbanisation, among others.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), sponsored by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, seeks to take stock of the blue economy concept today and identifies key strategies for—and impediments to—advancing the idea of a sustainable ocean economy.
In this briefing paper, The Blue Economy EIU present its interim thoughts and findings to participants at the World Ocean Summit 2015 as a means of furthering discussion and debate and of soliciting feedback from the many different stakeholders at the event.