The Blue Economy: An Asian Perspective

337 Pages·2022·9.047 MB·English

by  Somnath Hazra, Anindya Bhukta

Somnath Hazra · Anindya Bhukta
Editors
The Blue
Economy
An Asian Perspective
The Blue Economy
Somnath Hazra • Anindya Bhukta
Editors
The Blue Economy
An Asian Perspective
Editors
Somnath Hazra Anindya Bhukta
School of Oceanographic Studies Department of Economics
Jadavpur University Netaji Mahavidyalaya
Kolkata, West Bengal, India Arambagh, West Bengal, India
ISBN 978-3-030-96518-1 ISBN 978-3-030-96519-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96519-8
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Professor Jaydeb Sarkhel
Who makes his student believe that
economics as a subject is not as difficult as it
is said?
Professor Jaydeb Sarkhel, an outstanding
student of the University of Burdwan, served
the Department of Commerce of the same
university for over three decades as a very
successful teacher. He retired from his
service in the year 2014, but till now is very
much active in writing textbooks. He has
written nearly 40 textbooks in economics,
and all of them are very popular for their
lucid presentation. But to his students, he
will be remembered for his fatherly affection
and friendly guidance to their life and career.
An Introductory Note
In scientific jargon, the earth is known as the blue planet. The sky above and the
ocean beneath are blue. But in economic jargon, the blue economy represents a
sustainable ocean economy.
Oceans are the storehouse of marine living and non-living resources. From time
immemorial, humankind has been using these resources for their economic benefit
to such an extent that ocean economy occupies a distinct place in economic analy-
sis. But later on, as environmental concerns for the unlimited use of natural resources
started growing on, a new concept of blue economy emerged. The concept was ini-
tially developed by Professor Gunter Pauli in 2010. However, the idea occupied the
centre stage of mainstream economics only after it received high acclaim in the
Rio+20 conference in 2012. The policymakers, thereafter, started promoting the
concept of blue growth, especially in the island economies and in the countries that
have significant coastlines and maritime areas.
The term ‘blue economy’ is defined differently by different organisations and
authors. What can be drawn from these definitions is that the blue economy encom-
passes all types of economic activities that directly or indirectly make sustainable
use of coastal and marine resources. In fact, in introducing a new term, ‘blue econ-
omy,’ in place of an old one, ‘ocean economy,’ the objective was to draw the atten-
tion of the world to the fact that ocean resources are not used sustainably and the
time has arrived when our utmost effort should be to ensure their sustainable use.
Use of ocean resources in a sustainable manner is essential not only for island
and coastal economies, but for the rest of the world also. An estimate reveals that
oceans can contribute nearly 3% of the global value-added each year and are respon-
sible for about 80% of the economic activity. However, this is a rough estimate only,
because what we have done so far is to classify contributions of ocean ecosystems
to human life and environment into four categories, namely provisional services,
supporting services, regulating services and cultural services. But till today, the
entire mechanism of how oceans deliver different ecosystem services, what exactly
the associated economic and ecological benefits are and how anthropogenic activi-
ties on marine resources and environment affect these services are yet to be fully
explored. In consequence, the world economy is yet to take account of ocean-based
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viii An Introductory Note
and ocean-related activities in the national income accounting system. First of all,
this requires a proper development of the evaluation methodology of marine ecosys-
tem services. It also requires an effective administrative structure in this regard.
Since Asian countries possess enormous ocean resources, they have a tremendous
opportunity to include the blue economy in their national income accounting, and
they may lead the global economy towards this direction.
The importance of incorporating the blue economy in the national accounting
system, however, lies elsewhere. As soon as it can be incorporated, the economy
will be gaining importance to the governments and national policymakers as well,
because it will then open up a new avenue to alleviate the eternal problem of income
and employment all over the world, especially in developing and underdeveloped
world. Against this backdrop, we have planned to develop the present volume on
various issues of blue economies keeping an eye on this objective. Global experts of
different fields identify in their articles the misuses and overuses of ocean resources
and focus on the way-outs to justify the renaming of ‘ocean economy’ into ‘blue
economy.’ We hope that this volume will serve the purpose of bringing the blue
economy under the purview of mainstream economics.
It is our immense pleasure that a publication house like Springer Nature has
agreed to publish this priceless volume. We hope holding their hand tight we can
reach global readers and draw their attention to this burning issue of today.
Kolkata, India Somnath Hazra
Arambagh, India Anindya Bhukta
September 12, 2021
Contents
Part I Blue Economy: An Overview
1 Blue Economy: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Somnath Hazra and Anindya Bhukta
2 Advancement of Science and Technology: Future Prospect
of Blue Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Ghulam Samad and Jawaria Abbasi
3 Marine Ecosystems and the Blue Economy: Policies
for Their Sustainable Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Anil Markandya
Part II P rovisioning Services
4 Analysis of Trade Liberalization of the Blue Economy
in Indian Ocean Rim Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Rashmi Kundu, Somya Mathur, and Badri Narayanan
5 Role and Prospect of Marine Biotechnology in Blue Economy . . . . . 77
Arnab Pramanik, Sourav Das, and Tuhin Ghosh
6 Powering the Blue Economy: An Assessment of Marine
Renewable Energies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Sameer Guduru and Kapil Narula
7 Transitioning Regional Fisheries and Aquaculture
into the Blue Economy Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Shekar Bose
8 Desalination of Ocean Water: How Far Does It Contribute
to the Blue Economy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Somnath Hazra, Suvajit Banerjee, and Sourav Kumar Das
ix
x Contents
Part III Regulating Services
9 Ocean as a Repository for Waste: An Economic
Assessment of Chennai City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Sukanya Das
10 Blue Carbon Potential of India: The Present State of the Art . . . . . . 159
Abhra Chanda and Tuhin Ghosh
11 The Conservation of Marine Biodiversity in South Asia
and the Blue Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Clement A. Tisdell and Somnath Hazra
12 Valuation of Mangrove Ecosystems in South Asian
Countries: A Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Anindya Bhukta and Rikhia Bhukta
Part IV C ultural Services
13 Economic Valuation of Ocean-Based and Ocean-Related
Tourism and Recreation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Estibaliz Treviño, David Hoyos, and Elisa Sainz de Murieta
Part V Future Challenges to the Blue Economy
14 Monitoring Health of Oceanic Ecosystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Aneel Salman
15 Potential Future Challenges and Impacts on Fisheries
and Coastal Economies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Ignacio Cazcarro, Iñaki Arto, Jose A. Fernandes-Salvador,
and Valentina Lauriad
Part VI O cean Related Policies
16 Present Status of Ocean and International Maritime
Regulations and Securities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Sanjay Upadhyay
17 Ocean Governance and Integrated Ocean Management . . . . . . . . . . 309
Heman Das Lohano and Muhammad Bilal Maqbool
Word Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Editors and Contributors
About the Contributors
Abhra Chanda is an Assistant Professor in the School of Oceanographic Studies,

Jadavpur University. His research interest encompasses the greenhouse gas dynam-
ics in the lentic and lotic ecosystems of the coastal and marine sectors. He researches
issues of marine pollution and carbon dynamics in the blue carbon ecosystems of
India and Japan.
Aneel Salman is currently associated with Comsats University as the Head of

Faculty Development Academy (FDA), Principal Seat Campus. He has the unique
distinction of initiating and setting up new departments at Pakistan’s most presti-
gious and highest ranked universities. Internationally, he has been affiliated with
some of the renowned universities. He possesses a diversified experience in teach-
ing, research and management and has authored a large number of publications in
several international journals and books. His areas of research expertise include
climate change; behavioural, energy and marine economics; institutional gover-
nance; international trade; and public policy.
Anil Markandya is the former Director of the Basque Centre for Climate Change

in the Basque Country, Spain. Professor Markandya has also acted as a consultant
to a number of national and international organisations and has served as the Lead
Economist at the World Bank. He has held academic positions at the Universities of
Princeton and Harvard in the USA and at the University College London and Bath
University in the UK. He was one of the lead authors for Chapters of the 3rd and 4th
IPCC Assessment Reports on Climate Change, which were awarded a share of the
Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He has also been a Lead Author for the 5th Assessment
Report published in 2014.
Anindya Bhukta has been teaching economics for over 30 years at the under-

graduate level. He is a prolific writer and writes especially on issues in Indian
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