In the fight against climate change and to support economic growth, the blue economy is perhaps the most important contender. But what is it, exactly?
As climate change is already taking its toll across the planet, coastal communities are some of the most at risk for extreme weather events and the impact of rising and warming oceans. About 40 percent of the global population lives within 100 kilometers of a coastline. But the whole world depends on our oceans remaining healthy and sustainable.
What is the Blue Economy?
According to the World Bank, the blue economy is the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, as well as improved livelihoods while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.
The European Commission says a blue economy is defined as “all economic activities related to oceans, seas, and coasts. It covers a wide range of interlinked established and emerging sectors.” This definition typically encompasses three key factors: contribution to oceans and economies, environmental and ecological sustainability of the oceans, and leveraging the ocean economies to support growth in both developed and developing countries.
“When we say ‘blue economy,’ we’re talking about managing the ocean in a way that it’s healthy and continues to benefit people,” says Keith Lawrence, lead economist of Conservation International’s Center for Oceans.
Courtesy SGR on Unsplash
“We used to think of the ocean as this expansive, unknowable, infinite resource that we could never fully exploit, and that we didn’t really need to manage because it’s so massive and it’s out there on its own.”
That’s all changing as nations begin to look at ways to protect the oceans while supporting communities that depend on them, which is to say all communities, even those not located near coastlines. That’s due in large part to the role oceans play in transport, carbon storage, and food.
Why do we need the Blue Economy?
The damage to our oceans has become apparent in recent years as plastic garbage patches can now be found across the world’s oceans. The largest—the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—is twice the size of Texas, according to recent measurements.
Plastic pollution threatens marine life and ecosystems. It also threatens the food system and the oceans’ ability to sequester carbon. Oceans currently sequester about seven to eight gigatons of Co2 per year—nearly as much as the world’s forest. But increasing acidification of the oceans makes it less efficient at carbon sequestration.
Overfishing is only adding to the problem. For decades, fish have been pulled from the oceans. Commercial fishing has put that number now in the trillions every year. For comparison, approximately 55 billion animals are raised on land for food—that’s already nearly eight times the global human population. Best estimates on fishing suggest two to three trillion fish are pulled from the oceans every year. While criticized for a number of misstated facts, the 2021 film Seaspiracy details with clarity the number of problems with the fishing industry, including its impact on the oceans as well as human rights violations, among other issues.
Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash
Communities heavily dependent on seafood are finding it more difficult to source fish, and the imbalance in the food system has also opened up waterways to invasive species. This puts increasing pressure on the natural ecosystems and brings new stresses to local food systems.
There are also trade-offs in value positioning and perceptions, Lawrence says.
“When we make a decision to allow deep-sea mining to happen in a place, and we make a decision somewhere else to protect a place, say for its beautiful coral reefs, we’re implicitly making those decisions that one thing is more valuable than the other,” Lawrence says. “And economics gives you a way to quantify that and to make more informed and rational decisions.”
Value also goes for the things we don’t see such as phytoplankton producing oxygen or sequestering carbon. Some estimates suggest the value of carbon captured at the bottom of the ocean is close to $30 trillion. A single whale’s role in carbon sequestration can make it worth millions of dollars over the course of its life. “We have to agree whales are an international public good,” Ralph Chami, an assistant director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development, told National Geographic in 2019.
Chami and his colleagues estimated a great whale’s worth just in carbon capture is about $2 million per whale. That puts their total population value at more than $1 trillion.
But for most people, particularly cultures that still have spiritual connections to animals, the whale’s life is beyond a price tag.
Photo by alexandros Giannakakis on Unsplash
The oceans are, like naturalist John Muir pointed out, intricately connected. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe,” he famously said.
“Nature’s services are valuable — whether we put a monetary value on them or not,” Mahbubul Alam, research economist for Conservation International said.
“However, giving nature’s services a monetary value is a powerful way to communicate their functional worth, for example, the contribution of whale watching to a local economy. This is not to say that ‘$X’ is the value of the whale itself, but rather that whales contribute to the economy by ‘$X’ amount, thus providing an economic reason to conserve the whales.”
Promoting a Blue Economy
Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its Blue Economy Strategic Plan detailing how the U.S. can advance its blue economy and help enhance it on a global level.
According to NOAA, coastal economies support 2.3 million jobs and add more than $370 billion the GDP through a range of activities including tourism and recreation, shipping and transport, power generation, food, and related goods and services.
Photo by Evgeny Nelmin on Unsplash
But that’s just the U.S. The World Bank’s global ocean economy portfolio exceeded $9 billion, and includes projects covering sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, integrated coastal and marine ecosystem management, circular economy and improved solid waste management of marine plastics, sustainable coastal tourism, maritime transport, and more.
“The ocean is one of the big economic frontiers right now,” says Lawrence. “Almost all of global trade is moved by shipping. You’ve got offshore oil and gas, and deep-sea mining. As we innovate technologies, we are able to go to — and exploit — places that we weren’t able to go before. There’s enormous potential for the ocean to provide major solutions to help feed the planet and to provide clean energy and jobs.
“But if we do this thoughtlessly, we risk damaging the Earth’s largest life-support system – a system that provides for people, for animals, for ecosystems.”
Almost seven years since news broke of an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread across Canada, the saga isn’t over: the Competition Bureau continues to investigate the companies that may have been involved, and two class-action lawsuits continue to work their way through the courts.
Here’s a timeline of key events in the bread price-fixing case.
Oct. 31, 2017: The Competition Bureau says it’s investigating allegations of bread price-fixing and that it was granted search warrants in the case. Several grocers confirm they are co-operating in the probe.
Dec. 19, 2017: Loblaw and George Weston say they participated in an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” to raise the price of packaged bread. The companies say they have been co-operating in the Competition Bureau’s investigation since March 2015, when they self-reported to the bureau upon discovering anti-competitive behaviour, and are receiving immunity from prosecution. They announce they are offering $25 gift cards to customers amid the ongoing investigation into alleged bread price-fixing.
Jan. 31, 2018: In court documents, the Competition Bureau says at least $1.50 was added to the price of a loaf of bread between about 2001 and 2016.
Dec. 20, 2019: A class-action lawsuit in a Quebec court against multiple grocers and food companies is certified against a number of companies allegedly involved in bread price-fixing, including Loblaw, George Weston, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart Canada, Canada Bread and Giant Tiger (which have all denied involvement, except for Loblaw and George Weston, which later settled with the plaintiffs).
Dec. 31, 2021: A class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court covering all Canadian residents except those in Quebec who bought packaged bread from a company named in the suit is certified against roughly the same group of companies.
June 21, 2023: Bakery giant Canada Bread Co. is fined $50 million after pleading guilty to four counts of price-fixing under the Competition Act as part of the Competition Bureau’s ongoing investigation.
Oct. 25 2023: Canada Bread files a statement of defence in the Ontario class action denying participating in the alleged conspiracy and saying any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods, which is not a defendant in the case (neither is its current owner Grupo Bimbo). Maple Leaf calls Canada Bread’s accusations “baseless.”
Dec. 20, 2023: Metro files new documents in the Ontario class action accusing Loblaw and its parent company George Weston of conspiring to implicate it in the alleged scheme, denying involvement. Sobeys has made a similar claim. The two companies deny the allegations.
July 25, 2024: Loblaw and George Weston say they agreed to pay a combined $500 million to settle both the Ontario and Quebec class-action lawsuits. Loblaw’s share of the settlement includes a $96-million credit for the gift cards it gave out years earlier.
Sept. 12, 2024: Canada Bread files new documents in Ontario court as part of the class action, claiming Maple Leaf used it as a “shield” to avoid liability in the alleged scheme. Maple Leaf was a majority shareholder of Canada Bread until 2014, and the company claims it’s liable for any price-fixing activity. Maple Leaf refutes the claims.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:MFI, TSX:MRU, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:WN)
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 250 points in late-morning trading, led by strength in the base metal and technology sectors, while U.S. stock markets also charged higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 254.62 points at 23,847.22.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 432.77 points at 41,935.87. The S&P 500 index was up 96.38 points at 5,714.64, while the Nasdaq composite was up 486.12 points at 18,059.42.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.68 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was up 89 cents at US$70.77 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down a penny at US2.27 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$9.40 at US$2,608.00 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.33 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Supervised injection sites are saving the lives of drug users everyday, but the same support is not being offered to people who inhale illicit drugs, the head of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS says.
Dr. Julio Montaner said the construction of Vancouver’s first indoor supervised site for people who inhale drugs comes as the percentage of people who die from smoking drugs continues to climb.
The location in the Downtown Eastside at the Hope to Health Research and Innovation Centre was unveiled Wednesday after construction was complete, and Montaner said people could start using the specialized rooms in a matter of weeks after final approvals from the city and federal government.
“If we don’t create mechanisms for these individuals to be able to use safely and engage with the medical system, and generate points of entry into the medical system, we will never be able to solve the problem,” he said.
“Now, I’m not here to tell you that we will fix it tomorrow, but denying it or ignoring it, or throw it under the bus, or under the carpet is no way to fix it, so we need to take proactive action.”
Nearly two-thirds of overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2023 came after smoking illicit drugs, yet only 40 per cent of supervised consumption sites in the province offer a safe place to smoke, often outdoors, in a tent.
The centre has been running a supervised injection site for years which sees more than a thousand people monthly and last month resuscitated five people who were overdosing.
The new facilities offer indoor, individual, negative-pressure rooms that allow fresh air to circulate and can clear out smoke in 30 to 60 seconds while users are monitored by trained nurses.
Advocates calling for more supervised inhalation sites have previously said the rules for setting up sites are overly complicated at a time when the province is facing an overdose crisis.
More than 15,000 people have died of overdoses since the public health emergency was declared in B.C. in April 2016.
Kate Salters, a senior researcher at the centre, said they worked with mechanical and chemical engineers to make sure the site is up to code and abidies by the highest standard of occupational health and safety.
“This is just another tool in our tool box to make sure that we’re offering life-saving services to those who are using drugs,” she said.
Montaner acknowledged the process to get the site up and running took “an inordinate amount of time,” but said the centre worked hard to follow all regulations.
“We feel that doing this right, with appropriate scientific background, in a medically supervised environment, etc, etc, allows us to derive the data that ultimately will be sufficiently convincing for not just our leaders, but also the leaders across the country and across the world, to embrace the strategies that we are trying to develop.” he said.
Montaner said building the facility was possible thanks to a single $4-million donation from a longtime supporter.
Construction finished with less than a week before the launch of the next provincial election campaign and within a year of the next federal election.
Montaner said he is concerned about “some of the things that have been said publicly by some of the political leaders in the province and in the country.”
“We want to bring awareness to the people that this is a serious undertaking. This is a very massive investment, and we need to protect it for the benefit of people who are unfortunately drug dependent.” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
