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Transcript E&OE
Michelle Voyer: Hello. Hi, thanks for coming, so my name is Michelle Voyer. I'm an associate professor at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at the University of Wollongong. And my area of research focuses on the blue economy, and I've been particularly interested in engaging in this discussion at local, national, and international scales now for about seven or eight years. And when I first started out, the first obvious question was ‘what is the blue economy’? And it's probably a question that I still haven't got a solid answer to. It is in theory and hopefully much more recently in practise, a tool for delivering environmentally sustainable and equitable development in ocean spaces. But it is a term that's used and employed differently in different contexts by different actors. And some of the things that I wanted to talk today about is what are some of the strengths and the new things that the blue economy offers in ocean governance that potentially previous tools haven't been able to achieve, I particularly was going to focus on three main areas.
The first one is a tool to facilitate regional cooperation and multi-stakeholder discussion and dialogue. The second is as a future focus tool that gets us thinking and talking about what comes next for ocean spaces, what does the future of our oceans look like? And the third one is the role the blue economy can and should play in starting to entrench, starting to address entrenched inequalities and thinking about how we learn the lessons from the things we did on land and employ them differently in an ocean context.
So first and foremost, the blue economy is a tool to encourage regional cooperation and multi stakeholder dialogue. As I said, this concept of a blue economy is a pretty nebulous one. It's used differently by different actors and different context and that sometimes can be seen as a critique of liberal economy. But what we've been witnessing in practice over the last 10 or so years is - that kind of vagueness provides a space that different groups can come together and find space for themselves in those discussions. So we've seen the growth of collaborative arrangements, regional agreements around shared ideas and principles, even in the absence of really, well accepted and well adopted definitions. So that's a real AHA strength of the blue economy.
And it's been through a bit of a rollercoaster over the years. So the first time this concept of a blue economy emerged was back in 2012 when Pacific Island small island developing states, particularly the Pacific Islands started to draw attention to their vast ocean jurisdictions. So at the Rio 2. 20 Plus conference in 2012. There was lots of discussion around this idea of a green economy, which was very land based and Pacific islands and a lot of the small island developing states we're kind of saying, well, we have very small land masses and actually most of our resources lie in oceans and so they term this blue economy as a way to draw attention to the opportunities that exist within the oceans, and they really emphasise the importance of that it being an equitable process and it being and being considered in relation to the cultures and values of Pacific island. It got a lot of currency after that and really took off as a concept and I would argue that there was a distinct phase in this idea, in this evolution of the blue economy, where it became a bit of a business as usual model to push economic growth and this was so the EU blue growth strategy for example, was very heavily about building economic value from ocean spaces. We started to see a bit of a swing again more recently in in the narratives around the blue economy, drawing attention much more to those environmental and socially equitable dimensions of a blue economy, which is really encouraging. And so starting to focus on what the opportunities in the where the opportunities lie in the blue economy to think about the oceans as addressing the carbon challenges as addressing biodiversity challenges. And what will be discussed a lot today and in the next session that's straight after my talk in the maritime stream, which I can't remember the name of at the moment is particularly the ASEAN Blue Economy Framework, and the blue economy framework uses lots of this language about making sure that the blue economy is a tool through which environmentally sustainable outcomes can be achieved, as well as social equity, which is very encouraging.
So these three, I would say 3 big new trends in the blue economy space that I find quite exciting. So there's definitely a shift towards focus on more circular economy approaches in in building blue in including building the blue economy. There's a shift towards nature positive design principles and thinking about how the new and future industries in the ocean can work with nature and alongside nature. And there's also a renewed emphasis on integrated ocean governance and trying to move away from the more siloed approaches that we've seen in the past. So in it's definitely we can see this in the ASEAN framework. We can see this in the new blue economy strategy for the EU, that there is a lot of focus on embedding circular economy principles into our ocean uses and management. And that includes for new and emerging industries so we're thinking about. Designing waste and thinking in terms of how we manage waste into the new and emerging industries like offshore wind, for example, like offshore agriculture. But we're also thinking about how we work with existing sectors to improve their waste streams, to improve, for example, alternative fuel sources in shipping and those kind of movements towards truly blue approaches to ocean use. In the same vein, and this is, I think, a really exciting trend that we're seeing all around the world is moving towards nature, positive design principles and thinking about working with nature rather than this the old way of trying to dominate nature and suppress it.
So working, for example, with co-locating seaweed farms with nutrient intensive industries or using shared spaces, working towards making maximum uses of ocean spaces so that you've got lots of different outcomes coming from the one location but also at the same time phasing out more environmentally destructive approaches to ocean use, including things like illegal, unregulated and unreported fisheries. So we are at a bit of a crossroads, I think at the moment in how we use and manage our oceans. And I think where the where the blue economy allows us to do is start to have a conversation around what the future of our ocean looks like and this can be tricky because our existing regulatory and legal systems that govern ocean use is a very much built around those old ways of those old industries. So we have UNCLOS, which is built around the around oil and gas for example, so we have to think really differently about what it looks like now that we have a whole range of different uses in the ocean that weren't even dreamt of when UNCLOS was being developed.
There's lots of challenges that we'll have to navigate, but there's also some exciting opportunities. So I personally think, based on some of the trends that we're seeing, like the future of our oceans, looks like it has a lot more heavy focus on coexistence and co-use of ocean spaces through bringing together mutually beneficial industries, we tend to think about managing conflicting use and separating conflicting use. There's lots more conversations now about trying to bring complementary uses together to make the best use of ocean spaces. We're also, I think we're going to see a much greater use of deep oceans and including areas beyond national jurisdiction because we have such a crowded coastal area with lots of challenges that we have to navigate, so there is definitely a movement towards more offshore development and we also have. Ocean resources that are more decentralised and dispersed, so that creates a range of challenges and opportunities. Particularly in the maritime security space in terms of protecting critical infrastructure such as renewable energy zones, which are growing around.
So the other area is integrated ocean governance, it's definitely an area that we've been talking about for a very long time that we still haven't quite nailed, but there's lots of opportunities for innovation in this space. And for Australia, I feel like we can do a lot, a lot more in this area. We used to lead the world in this area. We had the first oceans policy, and but now we don't have a coordinated ministry or mechanisms through which to bring together multi sector management and multiple ministries and departments that govern and use ocean spaces, so there's huge opportunities for us to reclaim this space as ocean leaders.
So the third area that I was just going to touch on is a bit of my passion project and that's the role of the blue economy in ensuring equitable and inclusive ocean development. So this is seen as a key objectives by ASEAN Member States through the blue economy framework, and it's an area that the blue economy has been heavily critiqued for and including from myself over those earlier days of the blue economy, it did tend to this was the pillar of sustainable development that tended to drop off. We focus most heavily on economic growth and then we might think about sustainability and equity kind of always came last. I think that's changing and I think that's really exciting and encouraging. And we have a lot of, we have a lot of work to do in this space. But I think there's a trend towards trying to think about how we do it better.
Really, part of this is about ensuring that the blue economy doesn't become a framework for entrenching existing inequalities, including ensuring that relevant stakeholders and rights holders, including indigenous peoples, women, small scale fishers, they don't lose out from this new economic growth engine. I think there's also opportunity for us to think a little bit beyond just that kind of deficit framing of let's not try and hurt people that are already hurt more. Well, what if we flipped that narrative and started to think about how we can in the same way that nature positive design aims to work with nature and to promote positive outcomes for nature, working with people, with communities, with particularly indigenous peoples to foreground equity considerations and put that at the heart of our planning and management. So I think that there's opportunities for us to really be innovative in this space and create some good outcomes for communities.
The blue economy, as I said, does create actually space for bringing people together and finding opportunities and common ground and having conversations around shared values, so I think that there is real capacity in that space to bring that conversation into these equity objectives. And it does really for because it's an integrated management tool, it forces conversations once you do have sectors and jurisdictions talking to each other or it kind of does force you into these conversations, how about how the actions of one sector or jurisdiction might impact on other sectors or jurisdictions? I think blue economy uhm creates some opportunities that that, that previously siloed sector by sector approach has not managed to achieve so far in terms of equity and inclusivity.
So that's in summary, the main challenges and opportunities, in that blue economy space, particularly around ensuring that there's a space for regional cooperation, building on the goodwill and political capital as it exists around this term, the plethora of regional agreements and the really solid foundation provided through the ASEAN Blue Economy Framework to navigate shared pathways to more sustainable futures. I think it's a real, it holds the capacity to be a driver of innovation and future focused planning that focuses not just on managing impacts, but growing benefits. And finally, it's a pathway to engage and address questions of equity and inclusivity in practical, pragmatic and integrated ways.