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.”
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
