Dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the fifty shades of blue economy: An urgent step to address the UN Ocean Decade

Abstract

The growing relevance of the seas and the ocean in terms of economic, geopolitical and governance is reflected in the increase and diversification of scientific publications on the subject, as well as in the global agenda. Within the United Nations (UN) scope, the 2030 Agenda (2016-2030), its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the recent Decade of Ocean Science for the Sustainable Development (2021-2030) highlight the international effort in favor of knowledge, preservation, and sustainable exploitation of these resources. However, there is a vast and recent economic literature on the subject, which is confused and often contradictory, negatively affecting the international debate and policymaking. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to dot the I’s and cross the T’s on this literature, which frequently uses a wide nuance of terms as synonyms, such as blue economy, marine economy, maritime economics, ocean economy, economy of the sea, blue growth, coastal economy, and maritime cluster. Thus, it is necessary to explain the differences between these “fifty shades of blue” economy concepts, specifically because of the relevance of the topic in the Decade of Ocean Science, which often seems limited and misunderstood. To this end, the article performs a bibliometric approach based on 1,351 publications from Scopus and WoS databases, covering the 1959-2020 period, followed by a systematic review. We use the Bibliometrix package in RStudio (v. 3.6.3) to investigate metadata and Biblioshiny as a tool for data analysis. Among our main results, stand out: (i) the progress of the discussion over time; (ii) the expansion of the themes and actors involved in this agenda; and (iii) the main issues and trend topics associated with the different concepts. Since 2012, blue economy has been the most used concept due to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Given the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding the relevance of the blue economy is an urgent step to promote anti-cyclical economic policies and to address the UN Ocean Decade, particularly in the Global South.