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Blue Economy: An Overview

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Abstract

In 2012, the concept of blue economy was introduced first at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio-de-Janeiro (UNCTAD, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, The Ocean Economy: Opportunities and Challenges for Small Island Developing States, available at http://unctad.org/en/publicationslibrary/ditcted2014d5_en.pdf, 2014). Since then, various international bodies started promoting the concept to build up strategies for protecting and preserving priceless ocean resources. However, initially, this new term was often confusingly used to mean “ocean economy” or “marine economy.” To remove the ambiguity of these words, the UN in 2014 came up with an exclusive definition of blue economy. This chapter seeks to explore the challenges and opportunities of the blue economy. To identify the scope of the blue economy in line with the restoration and protection of ecosystem services and UN’s SDGs, this chapter provides some substantial evidence to increase the concept of ocean ecosystem services and reduce the anthropogenic impact on the ocean ecosystem. Finally, this chapter has given some suggestions and recommendations on the development and future directions of the blue economy.

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Hazra, S., Bhukta, A. (2022). Blue Economy: An Overview. In: Hazra, S., Bhukta, A. (eds) The Blue Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96519-8_1

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