Climate change solutions not always good for biodiversity

Agence France-Presse
October 16, 2024 

Studies suggest that rising global temperatures linked to climate change are causing glaciers globally to melt (Patrick T. FALLON/AFP)

Some approaches to tackling global warming can have unintended knock-on consequences for nature and the protection of biodiversity, say scientists urging a more coordinated effort on these challenges.

"Sometimes by trying to find a solution to a problem, we risk creating damage elsewhere," Anne Larigauderie at the Intergovernmental Scientific and Political Platform on Biodiversity (IPBES), an expert independent body, told AFP.

The IPBES will publish a report in December on how different crises -- including climate change and biodiversity loss -- are closely related and should be addressed together, not in isolation.

The IPBES and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in 2021 that a siloed approach risked "actions which, inadvertently, prevent the resolution of one or the other problem, or even both."

In Britain, for example, an ostensibly sound policy of planting trees on wetlands backfired when in turn these carbon-rich landscapes dried up, releasing the planet-heating emissions stored in their roots and soil.

- Negative effects -

Climate Action Network, a collective of non-government organizations, has warned against "false solutions" which promise a healthier planet but with a cost to people or ecosystems attached.

Intentionally injecting iron into the oceans, for example, to boost microplankton growth may seem promising but "geoengineering" techniques have raised concerns about potential repercussions.

Alison Smith, a researcher at the University of Oxford, said iron fertilization was "likely to cause massive environmental damage for uncertain climate gain."


"Measures taken to mitigate climate change must be evaluated according to their overall benefits and risks and not only according to their carbon footprint," said the Foundation for Biodiversity Research in 2022.

Wind turbines produce clean power and reduce the dependence of energy systems on fossil fuels, but can pose a risk to migratory birds or bats in some locations.

And building dams for hydroelectricity can block the passage of fish along waterways, reducing their populations.


- 'Breaking down silos' -

"With crises as vast, complex and interconnected as climate change and biodiversity loss, focusing on one aspect of the problem will never be enough," said Tom Oliver at the University of Reading.

It is "important to look beyond 'sticking plaster fixes'" such as geoengineering, he said, which "can have huge anticipated side effects."


Installing "underwater curtains" to protect glaciers in Antarctica from warming waters -- an idea floated at last year's UN climate summit -- could impede nutrient flow, Lars Smedsrud, from the University of Bergen, wrote in the journal Nature this year.

In the quest for solutions to our biggest and most daunting challenges it is "important to look at the big picture -- not just focus narrowly on climate change," said Smith.

She is one of many experts pushing for nature-based solutions that have "combined benefits for biodiversity, the climate and populations".


A 2020 study in the journal Global Change Biology concluded that "nature-based interventions were most often shown to be as effective or more so than alternative interventions for addressing climate impacts."

And it is in preserving existing ecosystems, rather than trying to recreate new ones, that the potential is greatest.

A 2023 study in Nature found that simply protecting existing forests and leaving them alone to regenerate would deliver considerable carbon removal benefits.


"There is no one single silver bullet -- we need to do everything we can, across all sectors, countries and methods," said Smith.

"Breaking down silos is the only way forward that won't cause more problems than it solves."

The Challenge and Reality of the Green Energy Transition: A Reply to Peter Gelderloos

By Tom Wetzel, Steve Ongerth 

October 17, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Source: Lorie Shaull - A woman holds a Just Transition Now sign at a rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota

This is a reply to the recent polemic against renewable energy by Peter Gelderloos. We agree with a number of the points Gelderloos makes. But we disagree with his claims about renewable energy and we disagree with his strategy for achieving an ecologically viable future.

The environmental crisis is a multi-faceted situation of growing environmental devastation along many dimensions — from over-fishing and extractivist land-grabbing, deforestation, declining insect populations, and vast plastics pollution to the global heating emergency — caused by the destructive logic of the globe-straddling capital and state system which continues its grip on human society.

To account for the system’s tendency to environmental devastation, critics often point to two aspects of the dynamics of capitalism. First, socialist environmentalists — including both Marxists, and anarchists such as Gelderloos — point to the system’s relentless drive for growth. Capitalist firms seek profit to build up the scope of their operation, to develop new markets, and hire more experts and managers. Competition forces firms to do this. Creating new products has often been part of the strategy to grow the firm, as in the vast growth in the markets for automobiles and appliances during the past century. Thus in practice capitalism generates persistent expansion in the production of commodities for sale. This leads a particular group of critics — the “degrowthers” — to argue that growth is the basis of the environmental crisis.

But growth by itself does not explain the global warming crisis or the system’s tendency towards environmental devastation. The basic source of the tendency to environmental devastation lies in a second feature of the system’s dynamics. An essential part of the profit drive is the constant effort of firms to reduce their expenses per unit of output. This is itself the basis for both the degradation of nature and the degradation of work over time. Capitalism has used all sorts of tactics to extract materials from nature at the lowest price, from avoiding costs of repairing environmental damage from mining and quarrying to land grabs against indigenous populations. Unsustainable extractivism — such as over-fishing in the oceans or clear-cutting of forests — avoids the social cost of ensuring the future of the resource. Capitalism also uses nature as a free dumping ground for its wastes. Cost-shifting is a pervasive feature of capitalism. If an electric power utility burns coal in a power plant, the emissions may damage the respiratory systems of thousands of people downwind, and also contributes to global warming. Indeed, according to a recent study, coal-fired power plants have killed at least 460,000 Americans in the past two decades, causing twice as many premature deaths as previously thought. Power firms don’t have to pay for these damages. Mainstream economists refer to these damages as a “negative externality.” That’s because the affected people are outside — external to — the buyer/seller transaction between the power utility and the customers who pay for electric power. But global heating is the greatest negative externality of them all — threatening the very human civilization capitalism is based on.

Thus we can say the global warming crisis has its root cause in the way firms minimize expenses through dumping wastes into nature — in all phases of economic activity, from extraction of resources to production processes and the damaging effects of products designed by the capitalist firms — such as exhaust emissions from the vehicles produced by the capitalist vehicle industry.

Growth does play a role because capitalism’s expansionist drive greatly amplifies the effects of cost-shifting. This is why the degrowthers have a point. Since World War 2 there has been a vast growth in the burning of fossil fuels and a massive expansion in the production of plastics by the petro-chemical industry. This is sometimes called the “great acceleration.” And the rise in global temperature since 1950 goes hand in hand with increases in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

But it is also useful to ask, What is growth? Capitalist firms do produce things we want — from food and houses to electricity and drugs that save lives. But capitalist technological development is inherently conflicted. Producing things we want has to be set against the tendencies towards work degradation, authoritarian control over the workplace, speed up, deaths and injuries from cost-cutting and chemical exposures, extractivist land-grabbing, and the vast “negative externalities” from treating nature as a free dumping ground for wastes. If we measure growth as more human benefit provided, this has to be set against the costs.

Here a useful concept is throughput. The throughput of production consists of two things: (1) All the material extracted from nature for the production process (minerals from mines, wood from forests, fish from the sea), and (2) all the damaging emissions (“negative externalities”) from the production process. With the concept of throughput, we can define a concept of ecological efficiency. If a production process is changed in ways that reduce the amount of damage from emissions (or amount of extracted resource) per unit of human benefit, then that change improves the ecological efficiency of production. If changes were made in production to reduce throughput per unit of output, production of human benefit could be increased without additional ecological damage. This is what “green growth” is. For example, replacing coal or gas-burning power plants with renewable sources such as solar or wind power increases the ecological efficiency of electricity production. Better recycling to reduce virgin materials required from mineral extraction is another way to improve ecological efficiency. Increasing ecological efficiency means reducing the damage to the biosphere from human production. The problem is this: Capitalism has no inherent tendency to improve ecological efficiency. Just the opposite.

The Green Transition is Real but Conflicted

Despite the complaints of Peter Gelderloos about “carbon counting bureaucracies” like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global heating is real. And it’s cause is the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and oceans — including methane as well as carbon dioxide. This is a crisis of the capitalist production system.

The “green transition” is the shift away from technologies in production, transportation and the built environment that generate greenhouse gases — mainly it’s a shift away from technologies that rely on burning of fossil fuels. Despite the claims of Peter Gelderloos, the transition is real — but it’s highly conflicted. And we agree with Gelderloos on some of the reasons why the transition is being slowed.

Gelderloos claims that there has been “a decrease in electricity production from renewable sources.” This is incorrect. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “wind and solar [photovoltaic] were up 75 percent in 2023 over 2022. Sales of electric vehicles increased by 35 percent. “Without the deployment of…clean energy technologies” — such as photovoltaic panels wind power, heat pumps, electric vehicles — “emissions growth would have been three times larger.” In the first half of 2024, renewable energy in the USA, including small-scale solar, has generated 40 percent more electricity than in the first half of 2019. In 2023 greenhouse gas emissions world-wide rose by 1.1 percent over 2022. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) points out, the rate of growth of emissions has been lower in recent years than in the 1970s and 1980s. Says the IEA: “Emissions…are undergoing a structural slowdown even as global prosperity grows.” And renewable energy “is at the heart of this slowdown in emissions.” According to the IEA, carbon dioxide emissions in the European Union declined by 9 percent in 2023 — despite economic growth. Says the IEA: “The primacy driver behind the decline was the deployment of renewables in the electricity.” Emissions in the core “advanced” capitalist economies fell by 4.5 percent — to a level lower than 1973.

Since 2010 battery costs have dropped by 90 percent. In California batteries and other storage systems have covered 80 percent of electricity at certain points. Battery output to the California grid has doubled in just one year. The long-run trend will be for batteries to replace natural gas “peaker” plants to cover spikes in demand. It takes at least an hour or two to get a gas peaker plant up and running. But electricity from battery systems is available almost instantaneously — making gas peaker plants obsolete.

However, we agree with Gelderloos when he points to the “advanced” countries exporting their emissions to other countries. Countries like Sweden and Germany export gas-powered cars and other gear that depends on fossil fuels. The USA is the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas. In fact, studies suggest that “exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative.”

Although the “green” transition is real, it is taking place within the capitalist framework and for this reason is inherently conflicted or “contradictory.” Capitalist firms are trying to make profit from production and installation of green energy gear or production of electricity using this gear. We can expect the capitalist cost-shifting dynamics and labor exploitation will occur in the “green” sector as in others — as with low-wages and unsafe conditions under non-union contractors doing solar panel installations. These are conditions that need to be fought. This means a struggle to unionize the green sector — such as the efforts of the United Auto Workers to organize workers in battery manufacture.

Some forms of technology developed within capitalism have an inherently capitalist logic, such as the development of labor control methods, such as the use of AI and video and computer surveillance of workers in Amazon warehouses to gain maximum work intensity. Fossil fuel technology also is inherently capitalist because of the way it is built on the shifting of costs onto others through the vast impact of the methane and carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and the volatile organic compounds that pollute the air around gas fields or refineries. But renewable energy technology is not inherently capitalist because in principle it can be controlled by workers and communities, and can help to improve the ecological impact of humanity. This is why the fossil fuel industry has dug in its heels to try to block shut down of their ecocidal industry.

A part of Gelderloos’s critique of renewable energy is the reliance on extraction of copper, lithium, and so-called “rare earths” (that are not actually very rare). What we need to consider here is the bigger picture of how these materials are necessary to a vast array of devices, from mobile phones, computer displays, and mining equipment to components used in combustion engine cars. The amount of these materials used in renewable energy equipment is a very small fraction of the total usage. Many of these materials could in principle be recycled. But capitalist firms are interested in maximizing their markets and they use planned obsolescence in their designs to sustain market demand. We thus have billions of mobile phones that are replaced every couple years, and the growing problem of electronic waste. Renewable energy gear usually has a lifespan of at least 25 years, and the components can in principle be mostly recycled. With more modular engineering that allows for repair and refurbishing of equipment and more robust recycling systems, the demand for virgin materials could be reduced. Capitalist logic has no inherent tendency to do this.

We also disagree with Gelderloos when he claims that “green energy investment is causing an increase in fossil fuel production.” He doesn’t really provide any evidence for this statement. Fossil fuel energy capacity is expanding although renewable energy is growing faster. Fossil fuel energy expansion is not caused by renewable energy but is investment-driven — the vast sunk investment of capitalists and certain state apparatuses (such as China) in fossil fuels and equipment based on fossil fuels. This leads these sectors to continue that expansion, pursuing their existing profit strategy.

Some critics of renewable energy would point to the reliance on fossil energy in the extraction and manufacture of green energy gear. But with the development of more battery powered mining and transport equipment and changes in manufacturing, this “carbon footprint” of green energy gear manufacture can be reduced over time. And even with this reliance on fossil fuels in extraction and manufacturing, the greenhouse gas emissions of renewable energy are still vastly lower than fossil fuel energy.

Although there are “green” capitalists making profits from production of electric vehicles and renewable energy gear, the green transition thus far is also powered by protests and conflicts at the grassroots level — social and political pressure from below, including the kinds of protests and land occupations that Gelderloos highlights.

The Inflation Reduction Act and Its Limitations

Although the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) serves the interests of “green” capitalists making electric vehicles and solar panels, it would not have been passed without the social and political pressure created by climate justice and environmental groups and their supporters — and the growing social awareness of the dangers of the global heating generated by capitalism’s reliance on fossil fuels. And major disruptive protests such as pipeline blockades and other actions of the sort Gelderloos advocates are in fact an important force for building this social pressure.

As economist Robert Pollin says, the IRA “is the most significant piece of climate legislation ever enacted by the U.S. government.” Reflecting the contemporary dominance of neo-liberalism, it’s based on “public/private partnerships.” Thus the IRA uses $400 billion of public money to leverage another $600 billion in private funds for an investment in renewable energy that will amount to a trillion dollars over 10 years, mainly in subsidies for heat pumps, solar panels and electric vehicles.

From our point of view, the IRA has many defects. To begin with, the IRA has no supports for a “Just Transition.” The slogan “Just Transition” arose as a labor movement concept, first coined by Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union. A Just Transition means we’re not throwing the workers in fossil fuel industries under the bus; instead, a Just Transition would provide things like income support and retraining and moving expenses for workers displaced in the ramping down fossil fuel operations such as fracking. The OCAW became a part of the United Steel Workers union and this union does support a just transition to a green energy economy.

As Pollin points out, the IRA’s level of investment in the green transition is way too small for the problem at hand. He estimates that it would take 2.5 percent of global investment between now and 2050 to reach the IPCC’s goal of “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Pollin says the IRA — if all the funds were devoted to green energy — would amount to only 25 percent of the needed investment for “net zero’ by 2050.

The IRA also allows the fossil fuel industry to obtain vast federal funding for their Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) scam. CCS was invented by the oil industry in the 1970s. Removal of carbon dioxide is part of the preparation of natural gas and the industry decided to use this carbon dioxide to inject deep into depleted oil and gas fields, to force out more oil and gas. But it has s major problem of the carbon dioxide leaking out. Because of the ineffectiveness of this technology, it’s evolved into a kind of scam for the fossil fuel industry getting more subsidies from the government. CCS is also used by the fossil fuel industry as a cover to allow them to keep producing fossil fuels with the fake promise of capturing the emissions.

When we say the green transition is conflicted, we mean that there is an internal conflict within the society between social and economic forces pushing for replacement of fossil fuels with green energy versus the fossil fuel capitalists and the array of think tanks and political and economic allies who are dragging their feet. As we’ve argued, the inherent dynamics of capitalism favor continued use of nature as a dumping ground for wastes, shifting the social costs of capitalist production onto the ecological commons humans require for our future. We agree with Gelderloos where he writes about this:

“Fossil fuel companies cannot and will not abandon their massive, fixed investments in fossil fuel infrastructure — they will keep producing fossil fuels. As they face increasing competition from other energy sources like wind or solar, they are doing the only logical thing from a capitalist standpoint: doubling down on investment in fossil fuels, building ever more pipelines and power plants even as the world burns and the waters rise.”

Insurrectionary Anarchism or Green Syndicalism?

What is needed in this situation is a social force that can push back against the fossil fuel industry and the environmentally destructive dynamics of capitalism. We need to consider: What is the social force for a transition away from an ecologically destructive capitalist regime?

Here we can see that the strategy Gelderloos proposes for revolutionary transformation is not up to the task. He highlights a number of important actions and struggles such as the Mapuche struggle over protection of water sources and forests in Chile, a major effort in France to block an airport expansion that would gobble up small farms, rebellions expressed through mass popular assemblies such as those in Egypt in 2011, and the many anti-police uprisings such as the Black Lives Matters protests in 2020 that were a reaction to the murder of George Floyd. These are struggles and actions we support.

However, many of these were short-lived as rebellious protest actions come and go. What he overlooks is the way these protests and struggles presuppose organizing and support organizations that are on-going. Certainly indigenous land and water protectors draw on a long history of indigenous community efforts, and rooted in community organizations. The potential for worker action against environmentally destructive actions of employers is completely disappeared in his discussion. Yet various worker occupations and strikes to force a shift to low-carbon products and against environmentally destructive actions of employers is a growing trend.

As an insurrectionary anarchist, Gelderloos is anti-organizational. This is reflected in the way he fails to distinguish different types of “non-governmental organizations.” That tag covers a vast array, from top-down, bureaucratic non-profits drawing on philanthropy of the rich, to grassroots community organizations, relatively democratic local unions, autonomous tenant unions, and a variety of grassroots environmental groups. These are all organizations where there is rank-and-file participation and members can control the decision-making.

We think workers and unions have the potential to be a social force to push back against environmentally destructive activities of employers now and can develop into a social force for a shift to self-managed eco-socialism. We already see green unionism as a growing trend. From the 2022 strike of United Electrical Workers at the Wabtec locomotive workers in Erie, Pennsylvania, pushing for manufacture of green locomotives, to the strike of West African workers on Spanish and French fishing fleets, fighting not only for higher wages but against over-fishing. Another example would be the March, 2023, strike of 400,000 German transport workers, not only for higher wages, but for lower transit fares, to encourage people to make more use of public transit. The strike was supported by environmental groups such as the “Fridays for the Future” protests against global warming. The climate protest movement was frustrated with the unwillingness of the German government to provide the subsidies needed for lower transit fares.

Early examples of the green unionist trend were the “Green Bans” of the Australian Building Laborers Federation in the 1970s and the 1980s organizing by Judi Bari and Earth First!/IWW Local #1 in wood products mills in Northern California, not only against worker injuries and unsafe conditions, but to protect the forests against unsustainable extractivism. Another early influence is the concept of worker counter-planning — such as the efforts of Lucas Aerospace workers in the 1970s to suggest ways the plant equipment and their skills could be used to build more socially beneficial products. Building on that, workers at Rolls Royce were more recently able to win an agreement from their employer to consider low carbon products, using the firm’s equipment and the skills of the workers.

Another example of worker counter-planning is the long-running factory occupation at the GKN auto parts factory in Florence, Italy, which began in 2021. The factory was owned by British firm Melrose Industries. The workers occupied the plant to fight a shut down. They have proposed conversion of the factory to manufacture of other products — such as “cargo bikes” used in product delivery. This is part of an orientation they call “re-industrialization from below.” In the course of the occupation they have sought ways they could use both their skills and the plant’s equipment that would be socially beneficial, such as production of renewable energy technology.

The potential of unionism as a force in the fight against the environmental devastation of the capitalist regime is the basis of the green syndicalist strategy. Green syndicalism is a self-organization strategy based on building grassroots unions and other kinds of social movement organizations among the working class and subordinated groups in society, to have organizations where the members are able to participate and control the decisions. These are organizations where there’s not an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action. An essential part of the syndicalist strategy is encouraging collective forms of resistance and disruptive action such as strikes, land or building occupations, and militant mass marches. Through the building of self-managed mass organizations and mass actions, this builds confidence and a growing sense of “us versus them,” and an openness to ideas about transformation to a self-managed form of eco-socialism. And it builds the movement that has the power to ensure a democratic result in a revolutionary struggle.

Thus the building of self-managed mass organizations has a kind of dual role. It provides the means of democratic control over actions which initially may focus on short-term goals people want to achieve. But also builds up the social force, confidence, and consciousness needed for revolutionary transformation.

While Gelderloos raises some crucial and important critiques of green capitalism, his critique paints too broad a brush and all too quickly overlooks some of the prefigurative elements and transformative potential of worker unionism for a green syndicalist revolution.


This essay has also appeared on Worker Solidarity webzine


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate

Tom Wetzel
In Deer Hunting With Jesus Joe Bageant says "those who grow up in the lower class in America often end up class conscious for life" and so it has been with me.After leaving high school I worked as a gas station attendant for quite a few years and got let go from that job in one of the first job actions I was involved in. I gradually worked my way through college and in the early '70s was part of an initial group who organized the first teaching assistants' union at UCLA in which I was a shop steward. I had been involved in the anti-war movement in the late '60s and first became involved in socialist politics at that time.After obtaining a PhD at UCLA I was an assistant professor for several years at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee where I taught logic and philosophy and in my spare time helped to produce a quarterly anarcho-syndicalist community newspaper. After I returned to California in the early '80s, I worked for a number of years as a typesetter and was involved in an attempt to unionize a weekly newspaper in San Francisco. For about nine years I was the volunteer editorial coordinator for the anarcho-syndicalist magazine ideas & action and wrote numerous essays for that publication. Since the '80s I've made my living mainly as a hardware and software technical writer in the computer industry. I've occasionally taught logic classes as a part-time adjunct.During the past decade my political activity has mainly been focused on housing, land-use and public transit politics. I did community organizing at the time of the big eviction epidemic in my neighborhood in 1999-2000, working with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition. Some of us involved in that effort then decided on a strategy of gaining control of land and buildings by helping existing tenants convert their buildings to limited equity housing cooperatives. To do this we built the San Francisco Community Land Trust of which I was president for two years.

The ‘Blue Economy’ Myth: We Have to Stop Thinking the Ocean Can Be Run Like a Business

Nnimmo Bassey

 October 14, 2024
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Pacific Ocean at Yaquina Head, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

In response to the increasing global demand for resources and the economic pursuits that come with it, attention on the world’s oceans continues to grow. But how should marine resources be properly managed? The blue economy is the umbrella term that looks at the planet’s oceans from an economic perspective and refers to the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystems.

On one side of the coin are the exploitative activities and economic sectors, including fisheries, aquaculture, maritime transport, tourism, offshore renewable energy like wind and tidal power, and biotechnology. On the other side are marine conservation efforts.

Global platforms like the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Center for the Blue Economy have called for oceanic sustainability efforts.

In March 2024, the United Nations Environmental Assembly adopted a resolution on “strengthening ocean efforts to tackle climate change, marine biodiversity loss and pollution.” A press release issued by the European Commission after the session stated, “By submitting and negotiating the resolution, the European Union and its Member States reiterated their determination to play a leading role in protecting, conserving, restoring, and sustainably utilizing the world’s oceans.”

The concept of the blue economy is rooted in the recognition that the oceans are vital to human well-being and the global economy. Still, they are also threatened by overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. Therefore, the blue economy seeks to balance economic development with the need to protect and restore the ocean environment, ensuring that future generations can enjoy marine resources.

Fundamental principles of the blue economy include:

Sustainability: Ensuring ocean-related activities do not deplete resources or harm the environment.

Inclusive Growth: Promoting economic activities that benefit local communities and alleviate poverty.

Innovation: Encouraging the development of new technologies and practices that enhance productivity and sustainability in using ocean resources.

Governance: Implementing effective policies, regulations, and international cooperation to manage ocean resources responsibly.

The blue economy is increasingly seen as a crucial component of global efforts to achieve sustainable development and address climate change, particularly in coastal and island nations heavily dependent on marine resources.

Challenges in Defining the Blue Economy

There is no consensus on the definition of “blue economy.” The term generally refers to the purportedly “sustainable” economic activities associated with oceans, seas, and coastal waters. Yet, that’s where consensus on the concept breaks down. The blue economy requires a clear, widely agreed-upon definition before it can be applied appropriately.

The World Bank defines the blue economy as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.” The European Commission defines it as “[a]ll economic activities related to oceans, seas, and coasts. [It] covers a wide range of interlinked established and emerging sectors.”

According to the United Nations, the blue economy “comprises a range of economic sectors and related policies that together determine whether the use of ocean resources is sustainable” while emphasizing the need to protect life below the water. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stated thatthe blue economy applies to industries with “a direct or indirect link to the ocean, such as marine energy, ports, shipping, coastal protection, and seafood production.” The World Wildlife Fund acknowledges that there is no widely accepted definition.

Defining the blue economy is much more than semantics. Some people mistakenly believe that it has been intended to benefit capitalism. This is a widespread phenomenon and is not just limited to corporations. In some ways, it is similar to the misconceptions that arose from using the term green economy.

People who live far from the ocean may not fully grasp how much humans rely on the ocean for survival, including regulating climate, providing food sources, and generating oxygen, even if they don’t directly access it for daily needs. This can lead to a view of the blue economy as simply supporting coastal transportation, recreational activities, or ecotourism. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states, “Approximately half a billion people globally depend on coral reef ecosystems for food, coastal protection, and income from tourism and fisheries.” And yet, coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate due to ocean acidification fueled by the climate crisis. They are also being destroyed by harmful coastal development—development that could be part of the blue economy.

Development or Destruction?

The United Nations affirmed that the blue economy would assist in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—especially Goal 14, “Life Below Water.” This triggered a rapid expansion across all facets of the blue economy, with projections suggesting this trend would persist.

Marine economic activities include fisheries, aquaculture, maritime transport, coastal renewable energy, seabed mining, bioprospecting, marine biotechnology, and waterborne tourism. These activities harm marine health to some degree and contribute to many problems, including biodiversity erosion, ocean acidification, climate change, water and air pollution, and even noise pollution that threatens marine life, including whales and dolphins.

The corporate extractive sector, in particular, has been looking for new territories to extract minerals such as manganese, cobalt, copper, nickel, and rare earth elements. This has become increasingly problematic due to the risks involved in resource extraction. Though the ocean may seem like an unlimited expanse that profiteers exploit purely for financial gain, it has natural limits.

“[A]lthough scientists and campaigners have been warning of the consequences of our rampant exploitation for decades, time is now running out to protect our oceans,” Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana in the UK, and Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the Center for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, wrote in EuroNews in November 2023. “We like to think of our ocean as infinite, but the truth is, it cannot stand this industrial-scale exploitation.”

The Earth’s marine ecosystems are extremely valuable to the global economy. They deliver essential ecosystem services to life on the planet and provide sustenance for billions of people. More than 3 billion individuals depend on the ocean for their livelihoods. Most live in developing nations; humans and countless other species rely on healthy, thriving oceans.

Trawler near the Columbia River bar, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Bluewashing: Covering Up Bad Behavior

Terminologies such as “green economy” and “blue economy” might seem promising but are often noted as cover-ups for harmful activities. “[T]he blue economy is not a benign concept offering a win-win for the economy and the environment,” said John Childs, a senior lecturer at the Lancaster Environment Center at Lancaster University, United Kingdom, and the co-editor of a special section in the Journal of Political Ecology that presented several papers on the blue economy.

Childs said the papers he reviewed suggest that the blue economy is “another capitalist fix in which global capital is seeking to reproduce itself, to keep making money and create a surplus. This is happening as we get to the point where much of the planet’s landmass [has] been appropriated.”

“If ‘greenwashing’ is the practice of making unsubstantiated or misleading claims about the environmental benefits of an action, then perhaps we need a new term—‘bluewashing’—to cover coastal and marine development initiatives which fail to deliver on their environmental and social promises,” wrote Nicole Leotaud, the executive director of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute, in 2017. “Personally, I’m tired of labels that confuse and mask the development principles we are seeking,” she added.

Threats to the Marine Ecosystem

Some protections benefit the oceans, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), established in 1982 to provide an international legal framework for using and protecting the marine environment. However, not all nations agree to these protections. Additionally, ocean-bordering countries have their own laws, creating a patchwork of often poorly enforced rules. Contested waters regularly result in tumultuous situations.

Many maritime crimes negatively impact oceanic health, such as illegal fishing or harvesting, ocean dumping, and polluting. In addition to overfishing, where necessary species are removed from the food chain, and accelerating biodiversity loss, unsustainable industrial development along coastlines has also contributed to ocean pollution. “All of these threats erode the capacity of the ocean to provide nutritious food, jobs, medicines, and pharmaceuticals as well as regulate the climate,” stated a 2020 article in the journal Nature. “Women, poor people, Indigenous communities, and young people are most affected.”

Climate change is another serious threat to our oceans. “[I]ncreasing sea levels and making the ocean warmer, more acidic, and depleted in oxygen,” the Nature article pointed out. The ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of excess gas trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but that is only a portion of the damage. “Unsustainable development along coastlines destroys coral reefs, seagrass beds, salt marshes, and mangrove forests,” which provide vital biodiversity reservoirs, sequester carbon, and buffer coasts against storm surges,” the article added. Because of human intervention, plastics, and nutrient runoff pollute the water and kill sea life.

We must not ignore the hazards of shipping. Sea vessels use heavy fuel oils that release soot, sulfur, and carbon dioxide, amounting to substantial emissions of some air pollutants and 3 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

There are many parts of the ocean where life has died. These sections have layers of crude oil and have been contaminated to outlandishly unsafe levels.

A Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission report reveals that the “concentration of noxious chemicals, such as Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, exceed safe levels by a factor of 1 million according to some of the samples taken,” pointing to the impact of oil extraction in Bayelsa in the Nigerian Delta.

Even though significant oil spills receive much media attention, the ongoing oil flow into the sea represents the bulk of the problem. “Hundreds of millions of gallons” of oil enter our oceans yearly, but most evade media attention. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, only a fraction of that—5 percent—comes from what the U.S. Department of Commerce labels as “significant” oil spills.

Some of the most prominent damage to ocean ecosystems appears to come from deep-sea mining on a massive level, which destroys the seabed. It harms marine and aquatic ecosystems while impoverishing coastal communities that depend on fisheries and other resources. The kind of damage that it could cause is almost impossible to calculate, especially since deep-sea mining is a relatively new endeavor.

In a press statement in August 2024, Dr. Enric Sala, the National Geographic Explorer in Residence and Pristine Seas founder, said:

“Giving the greenlight to deep sea mining would open a Pandora’s box of unknown impacts. Mining the seabed will inevitably affect fragile sea life that we barely know. And a [July 2024] study … showed that deep-sea polymetallic nodules produce oxygen in total darkness, which may be key to ocean health. The more we look in the deep sea, the more we discover. Rushing to mine the seabed will surely go down in history as an environmental disaster we should have stopped before it started. It is short-sighted to destroy, in minutes, ecosystems that have taken millennia to develop. Countries worldwide have so much more to gain by protecting vital parts of the ocean than signing them away for short-term profit.”

Trans-Pacific cargo ship at night, near Cape Disappointment, Washington. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Blue Economy in African Coastal Waters

Just as vast tracts of global land have been acquired to extract fossil fuels (in the United States alone, Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest environmental law organization, reports that “[t]he oil and gas industry has over 26 million acres of land under lease.” The same phenomenon is being duplicated in the sea. The well-being of more than 200 million Africans who depend on fisheries for food and nutritional security is at risk, CEO of WWF Kenya Mohammed Awer said in July 2023. Once corporate interests claim bodies of water as their own, they will likely become inaccessible to those who make their living from the sea and nearby coastal communities.

Industrial installations, such as crude oil platforms, establish control over the surrounding waters, ostensibly as security buffers. Fishermen who have tried to find more sea life in the high seas have reported that large parts of the continental shelf and beyond are off-limits because extractive industries have claimed and cordoned them off with controlled installations.

Unregulated industrial fishing in West African coastal waters, often carried out by foreign fleets, threatens fishermen’s livelihoods. According to “Fishy Networks: Uncovering the companies and individuals behind illegal fishing globally,” a 2022 report by the Financial Transparency Coalition, more than 40 percent of cases involving illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by industrial vessels from January 2010 to May 2022 occurred in West Africa. More than one-third of global fisheries were overfished in 2019, mainly due to illegal fishing.

Access to healthy water bodies is becoming increasingly difficult by the day due to industrial installations and related pollution. Massive oil spills have been the result of different security forces at work, including blowouts at wellheads at Santa Barbara River, a fire at the Ororo-1 well (which erupted in 2020 in Nigeria and was still raging nearly a year later), explosions of floating production storage and offloading (FSPO) units; the blowing up of oil-laden vessels; and burning of bush refineries.

Paying to Pollute

In the current blue economy paradigm, privatization prioritizes profit above ecosystem health. Water is not viewed as a commodity in this construct, and the buying and selling of oceanic water and aquatic resources would be prioritized over other considerations.

The blue economy could allow polluters to pay to pollute by allowing bodies of water to be used as dumps for mine tailings and other pollutants. It could also open the space for speculators on water futures, thus raising the stakes against access to clean and safe water for the 4 billion people worldwide facing extreme water scarcity for at least one month every year.

Promise and Peril for Ocean Economy

An OECD report indicated a significant increase in ocean-related economic activities by 2030, saying that “[t]he new ‘ocean economy’ is driven by a combination of population growth, rising incomes, dwindling natural resources, responses to climate change and pioneering technologies.” The projections show that the global value added by ocean-based industries could grow from $1.5 trillion in 2010 to more than $3 trillion by 2030.

While the growth of the ocean economy does offer potential advantages for coastal communities, it’s essential to monitor the adverse outcomes that ocean-based economic development can also yield. These challenges can include the growth of existing economic disparities, the displacement of local communities and their means of livelihood, pollution, harm to environmental sustainability and biodiversity, and an infringement on human rights.

With all of these stressors connected to the exploitation of the oceanic ecosystem, safeguards must be implemented.

Physical capital and technology have been given such priority in the world economy that other critical factors like human resources and natural resources are ignored or reduced in significance, and there is no longer any real balance in sustainability.

The drive for profit above the health of the planet and its people leads to the transformation and, often, the destruction of environmental resources without regard to planetary or social limits.

For coastal communities, the ocean is not just an arena for economic activities but a space for culture, spirituality, and interactions with nature. Connections to the ocean are a way of life. The prevailing capitalist bent may dismiss this reality as an inefficient use of aquatic ecosystems. Yet, it highlights the origins of the polycrisis in our world today.

When governments and corporations decide what should be done, they often ignore the people closest to the water and the fact that they know more about what is necessary to protect it. It gets more troubling when the uninhabited deep sea is discussed. For example, in Nigeria, Shell Oil is selling off its onshore oil fields and moving operations to the deep sea, where there is limited oversight on the damage being done. Even if the harm being done in the deep sea stays out of sight, its results still affect everyone onshore. This is a major reason for the concern anywhere in the world that is near the water.

While some countries believe that opening their maritime territories to investment will improve their economies, they invite the destruction of irreplaceable resources.

Trans-Pacific cargo ship enters the mouth of the Columbia River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Norway Explores Deep Mining in the Seas

In January 2024, Norway’s Parliament voted to allow mining companies to search a large area of the country’s waters, approximately the size of Italy, for the minerals needed to build electric cars, mobile phones, and solar panels. “If you find the resources, and if you have the technology that shows that you can develop this with acceptable [environmental] impact, then you will have your green light,” said Walter Sognnes, CEO of the startup mining company Loke Marine Minerals, according to a January 2024 Wired article.

Other companies are also looking to exploit the Norwegian waters, with the startup Green Minerals expected to “extract copper from what’s known as seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) deposits, according to its CEO, Ståle Monstad,” added the article. Test mining is supposed to begin in 2028, but several technical challenges must be resolved. Deep-sea mining companies must transport mineral deposits 3 kilometers (approximately 1.9 miles) from the seabed to the surface. How the maritime ecosystem—corals, sponge grounds, and other sea life—will respond to the mining is unknown. Yet, on a positive note, mining companies are required to study the environmental impact before they are permitted to begin exploration.

Norway has changed its position on this issue in recent years. As co-chair of the Ocean Panel, it pledged to sustainably manage the world’s coastline by decarbonizing the shipping industry and regulating seafood production. The Ocean Panel, formed in 2018, comprised 14 governments responsible for 40 percent of the world’s coastlines.

Norway’s shift in allowing deep-sea mining occurred because a new government was elected in 2021. Outraged researchers have said that not enough is known about the deep-sea ecosystem to risk mining for minerals such as manganese and cobalt, used in batteries and other electronics. “In marine biology, our knowledge about the existence, function, and distribution of many species is either too poor or non-existent,” warned a group of scientists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and NTNU University Museum, both located in Trondheim, Norway.

When a relatively forward-thinking country like Norway promotes deep-sea mining, it raises concerns due to the region’s history of resistance to expanded offshore oil extraction. The damage to local economies, fisheries, and Indigenous peoples of the region has been demonstrated before, so it is worrisome that support for deep-sea mining seems to be increasing once again.

Deep Mining in U.S. Seas

According to the Nature article, “Five Priorities for a Sustainable Ocean Economy,” “[b]lue carbon” ecosystems of mangroves, seagrass beds, and salt marshes store carbon at up to 10 times the rate of terrestrial ecosystems.” For example, the article’s authors cite the successful restoration of 3,000 hectares (approximately 1,500 acres) of seagrass beds in Virginia lagoons along the U.S. eastern seaboard, sequestering about 3,000 tons of carbon annually.

However, there are proposals to rely on seaweed to capture carbon or iron filings, which could lead to enormous damage. Yet, most people are unaware of these initiatives or the potential disasters they can cause. The concept appears benign, but the unsustainable aspects aren’t adequately addressed in the public sphere. Moreover, the pursuit of blue carbon through mangrove protection or restoration portends the danger of sea grabbing, displacement of communities, or disruption of their livelihoods.

Assessing the Value of the Marine Ecosystem

Some argue that putting a price on the oceans’ value distorts the meaning of the blue economy as the right path forward. According to a 2023 report by the World Resources Institute, the blue economy is responsible for more than $1.5 trillion of the annual global economy.

Although a blue economy is often conceptualized as the “sustainable” management of aquatic and marine resources and ecosystems, actions other than economic profit or power are usually seen as unreasonable or not viable.

A 2015 report published by Nature estimated that the assets found in the global marine ecosystem—including fisheries, shipping routes, and tourism—have a total value of $24 trillion and generate an annual output worth $2.5 trillion. In 2022, employment in the marine economy grew by 5 percent in the United States, outpacing the overall economy (3.9 percent) in job growth.

Yet, the fundamental issue is that the concept of an “economy” has become so pervasive that people often assume that aquatic ecosystems are intended solely for capital accumulation through exploitation.

Common murres off Cape Perpetua, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Protecting Marine Ecosystems

Local coastal communities must be mobilized. Forming alliances with fishermen, activists involved with natural rights, nonprofit organizations, and legal and political influencers will have to play an essential role in protecting the oceans. We must use all legal mechanisms to prevent threats to water bodies from corporations, governments, and other parties.

The world functions quickly, while political leadership in many regions tends to make strides on the path of least resistance, taking the most expedient way forward. It is a global responsibility to prevent profits from becoming the first priority for industry and political leaders, thereby maintaining the importance of natural resources and life below water.

The wars happening in the world today demonstrate that oceans and other waterways require protection. The massive destruction shows that appealing to the consciences of political leaders or the boards of global corporations is counterproductive. Grassroots activists and mass public awareness and mobilization, including litigation, can help to hold corporations, governments, and criminals accountable when official routes fail to protect the seas. The media can help expose ongoing marine destruction and unsustainable practices and motivate lawmakers to protect oceanic ecosystems. Destroying marine ecosystems can be viewed as an international crime. As harmful activities in the oceans threaten species, it may be considered a kind of genocide—ecocide, or the killing of Mother Nature.

Marine Protected Areas: More Action Needed

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) include oceanic space for long-term conservation. Other areas could be estuaries, seas, and lakes. Such protected areas also cover rivers, creeks, swamps, and continental shelves.

As governments, corporations, and illegal actors exploit the open seas in a highly unregulated ecosystem, community-led MPAs represent a potential strategy for protecting the health of the Earth’s oceans. Simply marking an area as an MPA may not be a neutral exercise.

MPAs can have many names: marine parks, conservation zones, reserves, sanctuaries, and no-take zones. As of 2023, there were more than 5,000 MPAs worldwide, covering more than 8 percent of the ocean. MPAs have been established in various maritime sites, including the open ocean.

Most MPAs aim to protect marine habitats and the sea life they support. One of the best-known examples is the Galápagos Marine Reserve, which is about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the west coast of South America and includes a variety of marine habitats like coral reefs and mangrove swamps, where trees grow directly in seawater. The waters around the Galápagos are home to about 3,000 plant and animal species. Some MPAs, on the other hand, focus on particular historical sites, like shipwrecks.

According to the Marine Conservation Institute, approximately 8 percent of the world’s waters are protected by some form of marine protection, with the island nation of Palau far out in front. Only nine countries have protected 10 to 30 percent of their waters, though only 2 percent have protected as much as 30 percent.

The UN’s World Database on Protected Areas documents MPAs submitted by nations. It reports that more than 15,000 MPAs safeguard an expanse of ocean covering more than 27 million square kilometers, equivalent to nearly 10.6 million square miles. In the U.S., marine protected areas cover 25 percent of the country’s waters.

Most African MPAs are in Eastern and Southern Africa, with a few in West and North Africa. Experts recommend that MPAs should be people-driven rather than financially driven. If the laws regulating MPAs come solely from the government, further details must be made clear to those involved in keeping these laws intact.

One example of these rules is the Chumbe Reef Sanctuary in Tanzania, established in 1992. This project continues to involve local communities in managing and monitoring marine resources. It has led to a significant recovery of degraded coral reefs and increased fish stock. This success is due to the involvement of local communities in the management of MPAs and the assurance of equitable stakeholding in the benefits derived from such conservation.

Another success story is the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park in Mozambique, established in 1971. It covers an area of 1,430 square kilometers (approximately 550 square miles) and contains a diverse range of marine habitats, including coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangroves. This MPA has provided economic benefits to the local communities by supporting sustainable artisanal fishing and protecting the region’s biodiversity, including endangered species such as dugongs, turtles, and sharks.

Unless MPAs are instituted with the full consent and support of dependent coastal communities, they may be a means of shutting groups of people off from nature. Governments can protect forests without the consent of relevant parties in what is often called “fortress conservation.” This concept refers to the ability of some groups to map out and prevent others from going near designated parts of the ocean. In such instances, the blue economy could be considered a cause of many conflicts. This situation could arise if communities or commercial entities contend to control resources found in particular areas. Conflicts could also occur when MPAs are cordoned off with a military shield as “conquered” territories.

Sea lions and ocean trawlers, Astoria Harbor, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Colonizing Nature

The concept of colonialism goes beyond the political control and exploitation of one nation by another; it also extends to our relationship with nature. The “colonization of nature” entails exploiting and transforming natural resources for economic gain without considering its socio-ecological impacts. This approach has contributed to many problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and armed conflict over resources.

Launched in 2018 and based in Nigeria, the School of Ecology (SoE) explores environmental and climate justice, agriculture, resource democracy, and overall socio-ecological transformation. The organization operates under the aegis of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, an ecological think tank where I serve as the director. One SoE gathering was based on the MPA concept and the challenges of the idea of the blue economy. A people-driven MPA would place the fate of their aquatic ecosystems in people’s hands. Such a level of stewardship would ensure ecosystem protection and restoration where damage may occur.

The organization promotes the security and resilience of ecosystems as wielders of power and capital. Although many people see the promotion of the blue economy as a means of securing life underwater, as highlighted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, this is often not the case.

Freshly caught salmon from the Pacific, Newport docks, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair

Environmentalism From Below

The Gulf of Guinea has seen high pollution levels and environmental crimes. A high level of sea-based pollution, including plastic waste, in the Gulf of Guinea is traceable to the Niger Delta, and it is time for regional governments such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to declare an environmental emergency.

A commitment to such a declaration will go far in ensuring that the population of West Africa can rely on a safe environment to carry out their economic, socio-cultural, recreational, and spiritual activities. Environmentalism from below requires the reassessment of the false idea that environmental concerns are for those who have had their basic needs met and have the benefit of thinking about luxuries. Environmentalism from below requires those who depend on healthy ecosystems for their basic needs to stand up against attempts to appropriate their territories for exploitation by powerful and connected individuals, governments, and corporations. Humanity is outpacing nature and plundering ocean resources to the degree that we are preventing those resources from recovering naturally.

Establishing community-managed MPAs is a powerful strategy for safeguarding the health of our oceans and halting further decline, particularly when incorporated into a comprehensive management framework. These MPAs offer a compelling solution that will help to guarantee that the aquatic commons remain free of corporate and industrial exploitation and monopolies.

Optimally, if local, community-based managed MPAs were established in coastal waters worldwide, they would restore degraded areas, rebuild biodiversity, revive cultural practices, restore dignity, and reinvigorate local economies. While capitalism often sets rules globally, there are definite ways in which humanity can work together to liberate nature from the bottom up. The world’s oceans—and all species they support, including ours—depend on it.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Nnimmo Bassey is the director of the ecological think tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), and a member steering committee of Oilwatch International.