Editor’s Note: After exploiting almost every land on Earth, the industrial economy has now moved on to exploit the sea. Exploiters do not view the sea as many of us do: a deep body of water that is home to unimaginably large number of creatures. They see the sea as they view any other place on Earth: a huge reservoir of resources that might profit them. These profits come in many forms: greater wealth, which in turn is control over even more resources, and an ability to surround oneself with and have power over more people to do their bidding. It is for this that they are destroying life on Earth.
But, of course, that is not something they could publicly acknowledge. They have to create a more “righteous” justification for their not-so-righteous action. This is why they, in a cruel twist of words, claim to exploit the sea to protect the environment. In the following piece, Julia Barnes explains how the blue economy is just another form of greenwashing. Julia Barnes is the director of the award-winning documentaries Sea of Life and Bright Green Lies. She is a co-founder of Deep Sea Defenders, a campaign dedicated to protecting the marine environment from seabed mining. deepseadefenders.org
The Blue Economy and Greenwashing
By Julia Barnes
The term “blue economy” was first introduced in 2012, at the United Nations climate change conference in Qatar, COP18.
It has become a buzzword used by ocean conservationists and industry alike. But what does this term actually mean? And more importantly, what are the implications for the ocean?
Definitions vary. For some, the term simply describes economic activities taking place at sea. However, most interpretations include language around sustainability, conservation, or better stewardship.
According to Google/Oxford Languages, the blue economy is defined as:
blue economy
noun
an economic system or sector that seeks to conserve marine and freshwater environments while using them in a sustainable way to develop economic growth and produce resources such as energy and food.
Embedded in this definition are the values and assumptions of the dominant culture: the idea that economic growth is desirable, that the ocean consists of resources to be exploited, and that these resources can be “developed” in a sustainable way.
Sustainable has become perhaps the most meaningless word in the English language. It has been pasted in front of nearly every destructive activity imaginable; used as a rhetorical shield to deflect criticism. We now have sustainable mining, sustainable forestry, sustainable fisheries, and sustainable energy. Yet, the real world effects of these activities remain the same: they are destroying the planet.
Some examples of sectors within the blue economy include: industrial fishing, aquaculture, shipping, coastal and marine tourism, energy (wind, waves, tidal, biofuel, offshore oil and gas), ocean-based carbon credits, mineral resources (deep sea mining, dredging, sand mining), and biotechnology (marine genetic resources, industrial enzymes) – all of which the ocean would be better off without.
The problem isn’t that these industries are being done in an unsustainable way and can somehow be tweaked to become sustainable; unsustainability is inherent to what they are, and to the economic model under which they operate – a model that demands infinite extractive growth despite the fact that our planet is finite and has already been largely denuded of life, a model that objectifies the ocean and values it only for the profit humans can extract from it.
The notion of a sustainable blue economy provides the illusion of protection. Meanwhile, industry and corporations are doubling down on their efforts to exploit the sea, extracting living organisms faster than the rate at which they can reproduce, destroying habitat, wiping out vulnerable species, and pushing new frontiers of extraction. Carbon capture schemes are popping up, abusing the sea in a shell game that legitimises continued emissions through supposed carbon “offsets”. Genetic prospecting threatens to privatize and commodify the very DNA of our nonhuman kin. Deep sea mining threatens to disrupt the ocean on a scale not previously seen. Offshore energy projects (for fossil fuels and so-called renewables) impose damage on the sea while providing power to the system that is at the root of the problem.
At a time when we should be pulling back, reducing our impact, and allowing the ocean to regenerate, the blue economy offers instead to continue business as usual, only rebranded.
As with so many of the things that have been marketed to us as “green”, the blue economy is primarily about sustaining a gluttonous way of life at the expense of life on the planet.
What if instead of defining the ocean as a resource, we valued it for what it really is? A living community vital to the functioning of our planet. The foundation of life on Earth. An entity with volition of its own. A force much older, larger, and wiser than we are. Something so powerful, beautiful, and magical, it cannot be described in words but can certainly be felt. Something sacred and deserving of respect.
The ocean is already collapsing under the many assaults of the global industrial economy. Further commodifying it under a vague claim of sustainability will not solve the problem.
Reading this essay reminded me of the “Holy Roman Empire.” As some historians have pointed out, it was not “Holy” or “Roman.” Those additions were intended to give “righteous” justification to a “not-so-righteous” endeavor. Sadly, these rhetorical tricks have a long, sordid, and all too effective history. Tricks that are among the cousins of “Bright Green Lies!”
I agree wholeheartedly with virtually all you wrote, although I would contend that “clean” and “renewable” edge out “sustainable” as the most meaningless words in the English language. I cringe every time I see the words “clean energy” expressed as a favorable goal by all too many environmentally inclined organizations. As we know (one of the Bright Green Lies) and what is actually understood, I think, by many who use the word “clean,” the processes of “energy” capture or extraction and concentration and transport, etc., from non-fossilized sources are very dirty in themselves. Obviously, we need to move rapidly away from fossilized sources, but why are some of us kidding ourselves. Yes, in my opinion, it’s a form of green washing employed by groups who have pro-environment goals.
And “renewable” is too squishy a word to have any place in our conversations. [That said, adding “non-renewable” before “fossil fuels” in every case might emphasize that once used, gone forever.]
When any person or group adds “sustainable/ity,” when it’s not, we need to vigorously call them out!! That said, I think “sustainable” is still a good word to have around, particularly with describing practices developed over 1000s of years by indigenous peoples to truly live in harmony with their environment.
At the closing of your essay, you note “sacred and deserving of respect.” [The whole paragraph in which these words are found is very powerful!] I’m now reading the 25th anniversary update to David Suzuki’s “Sacred Balance.” In my opinion, one of the best books I’ve read recently. The science writing is outstandingly clear and relevant and the more “spiritual” [see “A force much older, larger and wiser than we are.”] latter chapters were deeply moving for me.
A final point, as Suzuki and others have noted, we need to start talking about “harvesting” energy from the sun, something that photosynthesis in plants achieved hundreds of millions of years ago. Solar panels harvest the energy directly. Sun heated air and water convey energy for turbines and moving waters. And of course, the energy I’m using to type this letter, and everything else most living things do, comes from plants. And before the Industrial Revolution, it was what drove humanity.
@Robert Cluck
The rest of your comment is spot on, but I don’t understand your last paragraph. Sounds just like the BS that Deep Green Lies debunked. We don’t need to be looking at harvesting anything, we need to be greatly lowering our population and moving toward returning to living naturally. Of course these are long-term goals, but they’re the only proper ones. Humans should be focused on expanding our consciousness, not on unnaturally and very harmfully manipulating the physical/natural world for our own benefit but to the detriment of the Earth, its ecosystems & habitats, and all the other life here. https://rewilding.org/fixing-humans-by-expanding-our-consciousness/
RE: “We don’t need to be looking at harvesting anything, we need to be greatly lowering our population and moving toward returning to living naturally.”
I’m using “harvesting” in a largely metaphorical sense here. However, in more physical terms, “harvesting is the process of gathering ripe crops, or animals and fish, to eat.” Humanity, long before agriculture began, as well as many animals (like the squirrel I see outside my window who “harvested” acorns last Fall and stored them as an energy source) “harvest.” Even some ant species do it, naturally.
For the present time (while the glide path toward the longer-term goals you mention plays out), we will need “energy” other than fossilized and it will be “solar” energy, direct or transformed, as it has been for most of living things for most of life’s existence on earth. How we living organisms, of the species homo sapiens, capture that energy obviously can be highly detrimental–not “clean,” which is at the crux of my complaint about “environmentalists” using that word misleadingly.
Totally agree. But we need to stop using and start calling out the term “sustainable” when it comes to human interactions with the natural environment and/or the native life there. Whether some activity is “sustainable” is merely a determination of whether we can continue to do it indefinitely without killing ourselves off. The proper standard is whether the activity is in natural ecological harmony and balance with the ecosystem, habitat, and the native life there. That balance is what we need to focus on, not how much harm can we do without killing everyone who’s not human and possibly the Earth itself.