The global rush to develop the 'blue economy' risks harming both the marine environment and human wellbeing. Proactive, systematic and bold policies and actions are urgently required to chart an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable course for the blue economy.Concerns about the state of the world's oceans are widespread 1,2 . At the same time, interest in their untapped economic potential is escalating. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projects that the contribution of the ocean to global GDP could double from US$1.5 trillion in 2010 to US$3 trillion by 2030 3 . Ocean sectors, including fisheries, aquaculture, marine tourism, bio-prospecting, seabed mining, oil and gas, renewable energy, and shipping, are heralded by numerous actors and nations as lucrative frontiers for investment. The 'blue economy' -a term that encapsulates international interest in the growth of ocean-based economic development -has been a central theme in numerous recent global ocean policy conferences 4,5 .
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Marine reserves are viewed as flagship tools to protect exploited species and to
contribute to the effective management of coastal fisheries. Yet, the extent to which
marine reserves are globally interconnected and able to effectively seed areas, where
fisheries are most critical for food and livelihood security is largely unknown. Using a
hydrodynamic model of larval dispersal, we predict that most marine reserves are not
interconnected by currents and that their potential benefits to fishing areas are
presently limited, since countries with high dependency on coastal fisheries receive
very little larval supply from marine reserves. This global mismatch could be reversed,
however, by placing new marine reserves in areas sufficiently remote to minimize social
and economic costs but sufficiently connected through sea currents to seed the most
exploited fisheries and endangered ecosystems.
Many social scientists in the field of fisheries display a strong concern for the social engineering of environmental sustainability, but also a tendency to identify with the concerns of government. This paper posits that social scientists have their own responsibility in the fisheries field, and that this responsibility includes more attention to the realm of social struggle and distributional justice. Social struggles within and over fisheries are argued to be globally intensifying, as a result of four trends:(1) the condition that inshore fisheries have now largely become a zero sum game; (2) the new sets of controls that are occurring in the fish value chain; (3) the incursion of new business interests into marine and coastal space; and (4) the increasing participation, if not interference, by governments in what used to be mainly fisher affairs. Not only does a reinvigorated social science agenda create attention to other, neglected domains of fisher society; the authors argue that addressing distributional justice concerns may be a precondition for achieving sustainable human-nature relations.
The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1–3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)4. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.
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