Ocean governance for sustainability

Global powers and Pacific Island nations are racing to divide up the ocean's resources using the narratives of Blue Economy and Blue Growth to justify their exploitation, argues Maureen Penjueli, of the Pacific Network on Globalization. Technology advances make once-unfeasible seafloor depths increasingly viable and will allow corporations to plunder oceanic resources in a bid to secure food security and alternative sources of minerals and energy for rapid growing populations.

The Blue Economy concept grew out of the broader green growth concept and a growing concern about the heavy damage wrought on our ocean ecosystems by overfishing, habitat destruction, marine pollution, ocean acidification and climate change. The science behind the health and resilience of the ocean to sustain human activities and life on the planet remains little discussed, a gap that SDG 14 and the 2030 Agenda attempt to address. For Pacific people who have a spiritual relationship with the ocean, its industrialization reshapes the way its value was defined by former colonial rulers into that of transnational corporations and multilateral financial institutions. Such a move must be resisted not just for the benefit of the Pacific people but for all of humanity and the planet.

By Maureen Penjueli, Pacific Network on Globalization (PANG).

Read this chapter here.

Source: Report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2019.