The Blue Fix: What's driving blue growth?

This article explores the politics behind the promise of ‘blue growth’. Reframing it as a ‘blue fix’, we argue that the blue growth discourse facilitates new opportunities for capital accumulation, while claiming that this accumulation is compatible with social and ecological aims as well. The blue fix is made up of three underlying sub-fixes. Fir st of all, the conservation fix quenches the social thirst for action in the face of climate change. Here we see how protecting marine areas can be an important part of mitigating climate change, but in practice, gains at the national level are overshadowed by the ongoing expansion of offshore drill ing for oil and gas. Second, the protein fix satisfies the growing global demand for healthy food and nutrition through the expansion of capital-intensive large-scale aquaculture, while ignoring the negative socio-ecological impacts, which effectively squeeze small-scale capture fishing out, while i ndustrial capture fishing remains well positioned to expand into as well as supply industrial aquaculture with fish feed from pelagic fish. And third, an energy fix offers a burst of wind energy and a splash of new deep-sea minerals without disturbing the familiar and persistent foundation of oil an d gas. This dimension of the blue fix emphasizes the transition to wind and solar energy, but meanwhile the deep sea mining for minerals required by these new technologies launches us into unknown ecological territories with little underst...
Source: Sustainability Science - Category: Science Source Type: research