Innovating the Blue Economy: A Novel Approach to Stakeholder Landscape Mapping of the Atlantic Area Sea Basin

Abstract

The Blue Economy is an emerging paradigm with the potential to foster balanced socio-economic development of the world’s oceans and coastal areas, but it requires an understanding of the stakeholder landscape at a national and at an international sea basin scale, so that we can model potential equitable and collaborative economic development. Applying a novel, mixed-method approach we collected, collated and analysed spatial and non-spatial stakeholder information from five countries (United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal), that border the North East Atlantic sea basin. Through the development of Blue Economy stakeholder directory for the North East Atlantic area more than 600 local, regional, national and international (EU wide and global) stakeholders were analysed in terms of their Blue Economy alignment and to determine their respective enabling role (financier, service providers, research/innovators and regulators/policy makers). Results show 72% of the North East Atlantic sea basin stakeholders fail to recognise the socio-economic potential of the Blue Economy, regardless of the new policy instruments and a strategic focus from the European Commission. We also identify that public and research/academic institutions currently dominate the landscape of Blue Economy stakeholders; but note this is inconsistent, when compared with other economic sectors in maritime territories. Based on the results, we discuss the key challenges facing equitable growth of the Blue Economy in the North East Atlantic area.

Supporting places left to the sea: A place-based research agenda for regional coastal transformations in the blue economy

“…Methodological challenges are seldom acknowledged in blue economy discourse. As we have illustrated in this paper, the blue economy consists of myriad projects across many sectors and regions of the world, making the academic literature very case study-centric (e.g., Depellegrin et al 2022; Pace, Saritas and Deidun 2023; Turschwell et al 2022). This is unsurprising as regions typically experience vastly different techno-industrial, socio-cultural, and physical-environmental processes, meaning case studies are often used to uncover these particularities.…”

“…This calls for greater methodological pluralism and mixed methods studies that combine qualitative and quantitative methods in new and experimental ways to uncover key interactions between different sectors and stakeholders in the blue economy. Recent progress in this regard includes mixed method studies that scrutinise the views of multiple stakeholder groups within individual countries (Benzaken et al, 2022; Hoerterer et al 2020) and at the scale of a sea basin (Depellegrin et al 2022). Pace, Saritas and Deidun (2023) have also used ‘foresight methods’ such as horizon scans, scenario-building, and strategic orientation to help stakeholders map alternative future worlds in a bid to bridge across both disciplinary perspectives and industry sectors.…”

Working capital management and firm sales growth: Evidence from fish processing industry

“…In this paper, we analyze whether the investment in NWC, as well as the way in which it is financed, influences the firm sales growth of fish processing industry. Although the arguments relating to NWC and firm growth might be extended to almost any manufacturing sector, the fish processing industry is particularly well suited to the study of this topic: it has expanded its production considerably in the last decade (Figure 1), and is expected to continue to do so in the near future (Depellegrin et al, 2022). The fish processing industry already has an important impact on the analyzed economies, representing almost 2% of the total production value in manufacturers of the six selected countries (Eurostat, 2022).…”

“…In this context, efficient WCM becomes a fundamental driver of firm performance, especially for manufacturing SMEs that, therefore, have to finance growth while facing credit constraints. This could be the case for firms in the fish processing industry, which provides an interesting case study, as it is an understudied sector within the food industry, while at the same time, it has great potential for growth (Depellegrin et al, 2022).…”

Bibliometrics and visualization analysis of research in the field of sustainable development of the blue economy (2006–2021)

“…Crona et al proposed the integrated management of marine resources through collaboration in the marine sector to achieve sustainability and equity in the use of marine resources (Crona et al, 2021). Depellegrin et al mentioned that the blue economy had the potential to promote the balanced socioeconomic development of the world's oceans and coastal areas (Depellegrin et al, 2022). Cziesielski et al proposed the development of blue natural capital to maintain the sustainable development of marine ecosystems (Cziesielski et al, 2021).…”