Innovating the Blue Economy: A Novel Approach to Stakeholder Landscape Mapping of the Atlantic Area Sea Basin

The Blue Economy is an emerging paradigm with the potential to foster balanced socio-economic development of the world’s oceans and coastal areas, but it requires an understanding of the stakeholder landscape at a national and at an international sea basin scale, so that we can model potential equit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in Marine Science
Main Authors: Daniel Depellegrin, Aleksandra Zawalna-Geer, Allen Alexander, David Rodeiro-Pazos, Adrian Dios-Vicente, Boris Teillant, Amita Guneratman, Kate Hogan, Emanuel Mendonça, Ian Ashton, Lars Johanning
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Subjects:
Blue Economy
blue growth
North East Atlantic
maritime sectors
stakeholder mapping
geospatial analysis
Science
Q
General. Including nature conservation
geographical distribution
QH1-199.5
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.889582
https://doaj.org/article/13fe136d3b964f55b6eb93d8f3dd52a6
Description
Summary:The Blue Economy is an emerging paradigm with the potential to foster balanced socio-economic development of the world’s oceans and coastal areas, but it requires an understanding of the stakeholder landscape at a national and at an international sea basin scale, so that we can model potential equitable and collaborative economic development. Applying a novel, mixed-method approach we collected, collated and analysed spatial and non-spatial stakeholder information from five countries (United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal), that border the North East Atlantic sea basin. Through the development of Blue Economy stakeholder directory for the North East Atlantic area more than 600 local, regional, national and international (EU wide and global) stakeholders were analysed in terms of their Blue Economy alignment and to determine their respective enabling role (financier, service providers, research/innovators and regulators/policy makers). Results show 72% of the North East Atlantic sea basin stakeholders fail to recognise the socio-economic potential of the Blue Economy, regardless of the new policy instruments and a strategic focus from the European Commission. We also identify that public and research/academic institutions currently dominate the landscape of Blue Economy stakeholders; but note this is inconsistent, when compared with other economic sectors in maritime territories. Based on the results, we discuss the key challenges facing equitable growth of the Blue Economy in the North East Atlantic area.

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