New Book: Ideas and Actionable Steps for Scaling Africa’s Blue Economy Strategy

• Main Author: Francis Onditi, Douglas Yates, and Narnia Bohler-Muller
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Johannesburg 2021-06-01
• Series: The Thinker
• Subjects: blue economy; african union; agenda 2063; environmental sustainability
• Online Access: https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/The_Thinker/article/view/537/343

The subject of the blue economy is fast emerging both as a concept and practice. Within the African Union development envisioning, the blue economy ecosystem is considered as a strategy towards revamping the Agenda 2063. Due to its expansion in the policy realm and the academy, the scope and debate have considerably widened. This evolution has triggered fundamental questions: What does it mean for environmental sustainability? What does it mean for inclusivity in the exploitation of the blue economy ecosystem? These are some of the questions the current blue economy framework and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (established in 1982) seek to address (Bueger, 2017). However, there is more to the shareability and exploitation of the blue economy than these policy and legal frameworks, an extra dimension that can be housed in the geopolitical and diplomatic works that showcase the experiences of landlocked states and how states are/or aren’t resolving disputes emerging from the changing boundaries and resource locations triggered by natural forces and environmental change.