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The global rush to develop the 'blue economy' risks harming both the marine environment and human wellbeing. Proactive, systematic and bold policies and actions are urgently required to chart an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable course for the blue economy.Concerns about the state of the world's oceans are widespread 1,2 . At the same time, interest in their untapped economic potential is escalating. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projects that the contribution of the ocean to global GDP could double from US$1.5 trillion in 2010 to US$3 trillion by 2030 3 . Ocean sectors, including fisheries, aquaculture, marine tourism, bio-prospecting, seabed mining, oil and gas, renewable energy, and shipping, are heralded by numerous actors and nations as lucrative frontiers for investment. The 'blue economy' -a term that encapsulates international interest in the growth of ocean-based economic development -has been a central theme in numerous recent global ocean policy conferences 4,5 .

In the late 1990s, natural resources such as oil, diamonds, and timber came under increased scrutiny by conflict analysts and media outlets for their purported role in many contemporary wars. This article discusses some of the limitations of conventional arguments linking wars and resources. Dominated by econometric approaches and rational choice theory interpretations, arguments pertaining to "resource wars" often oversimplify or overlook the geographical dimensions of resource-related conflicts. By defining spatiality primarily in terms of the location of resource reserves and flows generating revenues for belligerents, these approaches overlook other geographical aspects of resources crucial to conflicts. Focusing on "conflict diamonds" and drawing on recent international relations works and geographical research on the political ecology of violence, commodity chains, and consumption, the article presents an alternative conceptual framework engaging with resource-related spaces of vulnerability, risk, and opportunity for conflicts. This framework, in turn, highlights policy biases resulting from oversimplified readings of "resource war" geographies.

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