Blue Degrowth: A Framework for Just Ocean Governance Beyond Growth

Introduction

The Blue Economy has become a dominant policy frame for ocean governance across international institutions, national governments, and development agencies. Promoted as a pathway to reconcile economic development with marine conservation, the Blue Economy bundles a wide array of activities—fisheries modernization, aquaculture expansion, marine biotechnology, offshore renewable energy, blue carbon markets, and ecosystem service valuation—under a single rubric that promises “sustainable” growth of ocean-based sectors (Bennett et al., 2019; Sumaila et al., 2021). Its rhetorical power rests on a set of interlocking theoretical commitments: that the ocean can be productively valued and managed through techno-managerial interventions; that market instruments and private finance can be harnessed to deliver conservation and development simultaneously; and crucially, that economic expansion can be decoupled from environmental degradation through efficiency gains and technological innovation. These commitments mirror the broader Green Growth paradigm that has dominated environmental policy debates in recent decades (Jackson, 2009; Parrique et al., 2019).

Degrowth scholarship offers a sustained and radical critique of these commitments. Rather than treating growth as a neutral policy variable, degrowth insists that perpetual GDP expansion in high-consumption societies is incompatible with planetary limits and that policies premised on absolute decoupling are empirically and theoretically precarious (Latouche, 2009; Kallis, 2018; Hickel, 2020). Political ecology complements this critique by illuminating the mechanisms—enclosure, accumulation by dispossession, spatial fixes, and ecologically unequal exchange—through which ostensibly sustainable reforms can reproduce dispossession and inequality (Harvey, 2003; Martínez-Alier, 2002; Peluso & Lund, 2011). When combined, degrowth and political ecology provide a powerful analytic lens for interrogating the Blue Economy’s theoretical corpus and policy agenda.

This article asks: How does a degrowth political ecology reframe and dismantle the theoretical corpus of the Blue Economy, and what alternative normative and policy framework emerges when ocean governance is reconceived through degrowth principles? The inquiry is explicitly theory-first and literature-based. It centers degrowth as the primary theoretical lens and uses political ecology to trace causal mechanisms by which Blue Economy policies can produce enclosure, intensification, and unequal exchange. The analysis is oriented to the Global South: it foregrounds anti-colonial delinking, local sovereignty, and redistribution as central concerns for any just ocean governance. Empirical material is used sparingly and only to illustrate theoretical claims; the paper does not present new field data.

The literature review synthesizes degrowth and political ecology literatures relevant to ocean governance and identifies the research gap this article addresses. The methodology section explains the literature selection and analytic approach. The results section presents the synthesized findings—organized as thematic critiques of the Blue Economy’s epistemology, economic assumptions, governance instruments, spatial fixes, distributional effects, and techno-optimism. The discussion interprets these findings, links them to the identified gap, and develops a normative alternative, “Blue Degrowth,” with concrete policy modalities and reflections on political feasibility. The conclusion summarizes the contribution and outlines a research and policy agenda.

Literature review and theoretical foundations

To mount a theory tour de force critique of the Blue Economy, it is necessary to bring degrowth’s normative commitments into sustained conversation with political ecology’s mechanisms of power and enclosure. This section synthesizes the core tenets of degrowth, the critical insights of political ecology, and the ways these literatures jointly problematize the Blue Economy’s foundational assumptions.

Degrowth is not a single doctrine but a family of interrelated arguments and political projects that converge on a few core claims. First, degrowth rejects the normative primacy of GDP growth in high-consumption societies: it argues that continued expansion of material throughput is incompatible with ecological limits and that policy should instead prioritize sufficiency, redistribution, and well-being (Latouche, 2009; Kallis, 2018). Second, degrowth insists that technological efficiency alone cannot deliver the scale of environmental improvement required; efficiency gains are often offset by rebound effects and by the structural dynamics of capitalist accumulation that channel savings into further consumption (Hickel, 2020). Third, degrowth emphasizes democratic, convivial forms of social provisioning—local autonomy, cooperative ownership, and commons governance—over marketization and financialization. Finally, degrowth foregrounds questions of justice: who benefits from resource use, who bears ecological burdens, and how historical patterns of colonial extraction shape contemporary inequalities (Demaria et al., 2013; D’Alisa & Kallis, 2020).

The critique of decoupling is central to degrowth. Decoupling refers to the separation of economic growth (usually measured by GDP) from environmental pressures (resource use, emissions, biodiversity loss). Degrowth scholars distinguish between relative decoupling (reduced intensity per unit of GDP) and absolute decoupling (total environmental pressures decline while GDP grows). The literature surveyed by Parrique et al. (2019) and others shows that relative decoupling is common in specific contexts and for particular indicators, but absolute decoupling at the global scale and at the speed required to meet planetary boundaries is not empirically evident and is theoretically constrained by thermodynamic and material realities (Parrique et al., 2019; Hickel, 2020). Mechanisms that undermine decoupling include rebound effects (where efficiency gains lower costs and stimulate more consumption), problem-shifting (where solutions to one problem create others), the limited substitutability of materials, and cost-shifting through trade that externalizes environmental burdens to lower-consumption regions (Parrique et al., 2019; Hickel et al., 2021, 2022; Hornborg, 2011). Degrowth therefore argues that efficiency must be complemented by sufficiency—that is, deliberate downscaling of production and consumption in wealthy regions—and by redistributive policies that reduce inequality and ecological footprints (O’Neill et al., 2018).

Political ecology contributes a complementary set of insights. Where degrowth supplies normative ends and macroeconomic critique, political ecology supplies mechanisms and scalar analysis that explain how policies are translated into material outcomes. Political ecology examines how power, property regimes, and institutional arrangements shape resource access and environmental change. Concepts such as accumulation by dispossession and spatial fix (Harvey, 2003) explain how capital resolves crises of overaccumulation by seeking new frontiers—land, forests, and, increasingly, marine spaces—where value can be extracted and ecological costs externalized. Green grabbing literature (Fairhead et al., 2012) shows how conservation and sustainability narratives can legitimize appropriation of commons through legal reforms, concessions, and market instruments. Ecologically unequal exchange theory highlights how trade and value chains can transfer ecological burdens from wealthy to poorer regions, enabling high consumption in the North while exporting environmental damage to the South (Martínez-Alier, 2002; Gereffi, 1994).

Bringing degrowth and political ecology together yields a potent analytic lens for the Blue Economy. Degrowth asks whether the Blue Economy’s growth-compatible imaginaries are normatively and biophysically defensible; political ecology asks how the instruments and institutional arrangements of the Blue Economy produce particular distributive outcomes. Together they shift the central question from “How can we grow sustainably?” to “How should we organize ocean provisioning so that human well-being is achieved within ecological limits and with justice?” This reframing has immediate implications: it challenges the epistemic authority of techno-managerial templates, problematizes market instruments as primary governance tools, and insists on place-based, commons-oriented alternatives that center local sovereignty and anti-colonial delinking.

The critical Blue Economy literature provides empirical and conceptual support for these concerns. Scholars have documented how Blue Economy narratives often universalize policy templates, prioritize market solutions (public-private partnerships, payments for ecosystem services, blue bonds), and underplay power asymmetries and distributional consequences (Bennett et al., 2019, 2021; Blythe et al., 2021; Silver et al., 2015). Economic framings that foreground GDP and market valuation are critiqued for obscuring non-market values and enabling rent capture by powerful actors (Sumaila et al., 2021). These critiques dovetail with degrowth’s skepticism about decoupling and political ecology’s attention to enclosure and unequal exchange.

Yet, despite these convergences, a gap remains. Much of the critical Blue Economy literature identifies governance risks and distributional concerns, but fewer works place degrowth at the center of the critique and systematically translate degrowth principles into a coherent policy program for ocean governance. This article addresses that gap by synthesizing degrowth and political ecology literatures and developing a “Blue Degrowth” framework that is both normative and operational—one that articulates principles, institutional modalities, and policy instruments suitable for Global South contexts while remaining attentive to political feasibility.

Methods

This article is a literature-based research article that employs purposive sampling and thematic synthesis to develop a theory-first critique. The methodology is designed to produce a coherent conceptual argument rather than to generate new empirical data.

The literature selection began with canonical degrowth texts (Latouche, 2009; Jackson, 2009; Kallis, 2018; Hickel, 2020) and foundational political ecology works (Martínez-Alier, 2002; Robbins, 2012; Harvey, 2003). From these seeds, the review traced references to critical Blue Economy scholarship (Silver et al., 2015; Bennett et al., 2019, 2021; Blythe et al., 2021) and to literatures on global value chains, green grabbing, and enclosure (Gereffi, 1994; Fairhead et al., 2012; Peluso, 1992; Peluso & Lund, 2011). Inclusion criteria prioritized theoretical relevance to degrowth or political ecology, explicit engagement with growth, decoupling, or resource governance, and disciplinary diversity. Works that treated growth as agnostic or advanced growth-neutral policy frameworks without engaging with degrowth critiques were deprioritized to maintain theoretical coherence.

Analytically, the article uses thematic synthesis and conceptual mapping. Texts were coded for recurring themes: decoupling and its critiques; market instruments and commodification; enclosure and spatial fix; distributional effects and value capture; techno-optimism and problem-shifting; and governance alternatives. Causal mechanisms were identified by tracing how policy instruments (e.g., PPPs, PES, concessions) are theorized to produce outcomes (enclosure, intensification, unequal exchange). Normative implications were derived by mapping degrowth principles onto governance alternatives and policy modalities. The method is interpretive and synthetic: it aims to produce a coherent theoretical critique and a policy program grounded in the selected literature.

Results

The literature synthesis yields six interrelated findings that together constitute a systematic critique of the Blue Economy from a degrowth political ecology perspective. These findings are not discrete; they interlock and reinforce one another, producing a comprehensive challenge to growth-compatible ocean governance.

First, the Blue Economy’s epistemic framing privileges techno-managerial universalism and market valuation. Policy documents and institutional narratives frequently treat the ocean as a resource base amenable to optimization: ecosystem services are priced, carbon is quantified, and marine spaces are zoned according to economic potential. This epistemic stance has two problematic consequences. It reduces complex socio-ecological relations to exchange values, thereby rendering invisible non-market forms of value—cultural, spiritual, and subsistence uses—that are central to many coastal communities. It also legitimates universal policy templates that assume scalability and transferability across diverse contexts. Degrowth and political ecology critique this universalism: knowledge about marine systems is socially produced, historically situated, and embedded in power relations; ignoring this plurality risks maladaptive interventions that undermine local governance and livelihoods (Escobar, 1995; Latouche, 2009).

Second, the decoupling assumption—the idea that economic growth can be separated from environmental pressures through efficiency and technological innovation—is theoretically and empirically fragile. The degrowth literature, supported by comprehensive reviews, identifies multiple mechanisms (rebound effects, problem-shifting, limits of recycling and circularity, cost-shifting) that undermine absolute decoupling. Rebound effects are pervasive: efficiency gains lower the effective cost of resource use and can stimulate additional consumption or structural shifts that increase overall throughput (Parrique et al., 2019). Rising energy expenditures for marginal extraction mean that as easy resources are depleted, extraction becomes more energy-intensive, offsetting efficiency gains. Problem-shifting occurs when technological solutions to one problem create new pressures elsewhere (for example, biofuel expansion driving land-use change). Recycling and circularity have limits: material cycles are lossy and cannot indefinitely substitute for virgin extraction in a growing economy. Finally, cost-shifting through trade allows high-consumption countries to externalize environmental burdens to lower-consumption regions, masking the true global footprint of growth (Hornborg, 2011; Hickel et al., 2021, 2022). For ocean governance, this critique implies that policies premised on decoupling risk postponing necessary downscaling and redistribution.

Third, market instruments—public-private partnerships, payments for ecosystem services, certification schemes, and blue bonds—commodify marine commons and create pathways for governance capture. Political ecology shows how marketization can reconfigure property relations and enable rent extraction. Certification regimes, for instance, often impose compliance costs on small producers while enabling premium capture by downstream actors; payments for ecosystem services can reframe stewardship as a service to be purchased rather than a collective responsibility; and blue bonds can mobilize capital but also create debt obligations and conditionalities that constrain public policy space (Vandergeest & Unno, 2012). From a degrowth perspective, market instruments may be useful in narrow, carefully regulated contexts, but they cannot be the primary modality for governing ocean commons; instead, democratic, commons-based governance must be prioritized (Fairhead et al., 2012; Gereffi, 1994).

Fourth, Blue Economy projects frequently function as spatial fixes for capital, reproducing accumulation by dispossession in marine contexts. When land frontiers close or terrestrial investments yield diminishing returns, capital seeks new arenas for accumulation. The ocean—its seabed minerals, its aquaculture potential, its carbon sequestration services—becomes a new frontier. Legal reforms, concessions, and financial instruments can facilitate the transfer of access rights from customary users to private actors, producing ocean grabbing and undermining local stewardship. These processes reproduce historical patterns of colonial extraction and unequal exchange: resources and ecological burdens are shifted to the Global South while value is captured in the Global North (Harvey, 2003; Hornborg & Martínez-Alier, 2016; Hickel et al., 2021, 2022). The Blue Economy’s promise of inclusive growth thus risks masking a deeper dynamic of dispossession.

Fifth, distributional outcomes under Blue Economy regimes are often regressive. Value chains in marine sectors are frequently buyer-driven: processing, branding, and high-value transformation occur in the Global North, while primary production and ecological risk remain in the Global South. Producers face price volatility, precarious labor conditions, and exposure to ecological shocks, while surplus value is captured upstream. Degrowth reframes the policy objective from maximizing GDP to ensuring sufficiency, redistribution, and local value retention. Policies that prioritize cooperative processing, local ownership, and public investment in local infrastructure can help retain value locally and reduce vulnerability (Gereffi, 1994; Martínez-Alier, 2002).

Sixth, techno-optimism masks problem-shifting and governance blind spots. The Blue Economy’s faith in technological fixes—intensified aquaculture, carbon sequestration, and market-based conservation—can obscure the potential for new resource demands, novel environmental risks, and lock-in to expansionary pathways. Technological solutions often require inputs (energy, feed, minerals) that create new ecological pressures; they can legitimize further expansion by promising future mitigation; and they can concentrate control in the hands of firms that own the technologies. Degrowth advocates for precaution, low-tech place-based solutions, and policies that prioritize sufficiency over scale (Parrique et al., 2019; Demaria et al., 2013).

These findings point to causal mechanisms: market integration drives intensification and specialization, which in turn produce ecological simplification and social precarity (a Jevons-like treadmill); certification and buyer-driven chains enable value capture by downstream actors; and legal and financial instruments reconfigure access rights to favor capital. Conceptualizing these mechanisms clarifies how the Blue Economy’s theoretical assumptions translate into material outcomes and where policy interventions might interrupt harmful pathways. The remainder of the article translates these critiques into a normative and policy program: Blue Degrowth.

The Indonesian illustrative vignette

To ground the theoretical argument, this section synthesizes documented patterns from Indonesian coastal fisheries and aquaculture contexts into a composite illustration of the causal mechanisms identified above. The vignette draws on ethnographic, policy, and political ecology studies of customary marine tenure, market integration, and value chain dynamics in Indonesian coastal communities (Halim et al., 2019, 2020; Adhuri et al., 2016; Thorburn, 2000, 2001; Mantjoro, 1996; Zerner, 1994; Bailey & Zerner, 1992), and is anonymized to avoid identifying any single location.

In a coastal district of Indonesia, small-scale fishers and seaweed producers historically managed nearshore areas through customary rules that regulated access, seasonal closures, and gear types (Adhuri et al., 2016; Thorburn, 2000, 2001; Bailey & Zerner, 1992; Zerner, 1994; Mantjoro, 1996). These customary institutions were embedded in social relations: elders mediated disputes, seasonal rituals governed harvest timing, and reciprocal labor arrangements distributed risk (Thorburn, 2000; Mantjoro, 1996). Local provisioning—food for households, barter exchanges, and small-scale sales at local markets—was the backbone of livelihoods (Bailey, 1988; Mantjoro, 1996). Ecological knowledge was place-based: fishers read currents, seasonal patterns, and local species behavior to manage harvests adaptively (Thorburn, 2000, 2001; Bailey & Zerner, 1992; Zerner, 1994).

Over the past decade, a national Blue Economy strategy promoted aquaculture intensification and export-oriented processing (Bappenas, 2023; World Bank, 2021; Trenggono, 2025), effectively reframed these nearshore areas as zones of economic potential and a development pathway. Investment incentives, tax breaks, and public-private partnership models were offered to attract capital (World Bank, 2021; Bappenas, 2023). Certification schemes that favored larger producers able to meet compliance costs (Vandergeest & Unno, 2012; Bush et al., 2013) were introduced to access premium markets, and a processing plant was financed in the regional capital to aggregate and process raw material for export (World Bank, 2021).

The transition unfolded unevenly. Some producers—those with capital or social connections—were able to scale up, adopt new gear, and meet certification requirements (Bush et al., 2013). Many small producers, however, faced barriers: the upfront costs of inputs and certification, the need to access processing facilities located in the regional center, and the loss of customary access as nearshore areas were reclassified for commercial use (Bush et al., 2013; Vandergeest & Unno, 2012; Halim et al., 2019). This pattern exemplifies the ‘accumulation by dispossession’ mechanism theorized by Harvey (2003), where legal reforms reconfigure property relations to favor capital accumulation. Market integration created new incentives: higher short-term prices encouraged intensification and monoculture practices that simplified habitats and increased vulnerability to pests and disease (Bush et al., 2013; World Bank, 2021). Inputs (seed stock, feed, and chemical treatments) were increasingly purchased from outside, creating new dependencies and cash outflows (MicroSave Consulting, 2025).

Initially, incomes rose for some households, and local employment in processing expanded (World Bank, 2021). But as production scaled, per-unit prices fell and competition increased (Purcell et al., 2017; Garlock et al., 2020; Dahl & Oglend, 2014), creating the Jevons paradox. Certification compliance costs and transport expenses eroded margins for small producers (Bush et al., 2013; Tsantiris et al., 2018). When a regional climate shock (anomalous sea temperatures and storm events) reduced yields, small producers faced price collapses and limited social protection (Iskandar et al., 2022; MicroSave Consulting, 2025). The processing firm, integrated into global value chains, shifted sourcing to other regions with lower costs while retaining capital and profits in the national center (Purcell et al., 2017). This illustrates the ‘buyer-driven value chain’ dynamics theorized by Gereffi (1994), where downstream actors capture surplus value while externalizing risk to primary producers. As a result, local employment was precarious: casual labor, seasonal contracts, and limited labor protections meant that households had little buffer against shocks (Statista, 2024; MicroSave Consulting, 2025).

Institutional changes compounded these dynamics. Formal concessions and zoning regulations, designed to attract investment, often failed to recognize customary tenure (Halim et al., 2019, 2020; World Bank, 2021). Where co-management arrangements were nominally established, they lacked resources and enforcement capacity (Halim et al., 2020; Adhuri et al., 2016). Certification schemes, while marketed as inclusive, required documentation and investments that excluded many small producers (Vandergeest & Unno, 2012). Financial instruments (credit lines tied to production targets) encouraged expansion but also indebtedness (MicroSave Consulting, 2025). These institutional reconfigurations exemplify the ‘enclosure’ mechanisms described in the political ecology literature (Peluso & Lund, 2011; Fairhead et al., 2012). The net effect was a reconfiguration of access and value: ecological burdens (habitat simplification, pollution, and increased vulnerability to climate variability) were concentrated locally, while value was captured by processors and exporters upstream (Purcell et al., 2017; Garlock et al., 2020).

This vignette illustrates several mechanisms identified in the theoretical analysis: market integration producing a production treadmill (a Jevons-like effect), value capture by downstream actors, and the externalization of ecological and climate risks onto precarious producers. It also shows how legal and institutional changes (formalization of concessions, certification regimes, and investment incentives) can reconfigure access and governance in ways that disadvantage customary users. The vignette is intentionally composite and anonymized; it is offered as an illustrative anchor for the causal pathways discussed above rather than as empirical proof.

Discussion

The degrowth political ecology critique reframes the Blue Economy debate in three interrelated ways. First, it shifts the normative horizon from growth-compatibility to limits and sufficiency. Second, it centers justice (anti-colonial delinking, reparative redistribution, and commons governance) over technocratic optimization. Third, it emphasizes plural, participatory governance over marketization and financialization. Each reframing has practical implications and raises trade-offs that must be confronted.

Reframing policy evaluation around sufficiency and limits requires new metrics and political strategies. Metrics that combine ecological ceilings with social foundations can guide policy, but they also require political negotiation: who sets the ceilings, and how are social foundations defined and financed? Degrowth scholars emphasize redistribution: wealthy countries must reduce consumption and provide material and financial support to enable sustainable development in the Global South (Kallis, 2018; Hickel, 2020). This raises geopolitical questions about responsibility, reparations, and the redistribution of ecological space that cannot be resolved by technocratic fixes alone.

Anti-colonial delinking is politically fraught but necessary. Delinking does not mean isolation; it means strategic autonomy and the capacity to refuse extractive projects that reproduce dispossession. Practically, delinking can take the form of selective import substitution for critical inputs, legal protections for customary tenure, and trade policies that prioritize local value retention. These measures will face resistance from powerful economic interests and from international institutions that promote liberalized trade. Building political coalitions among social movements, local communities, progressive policymakers, and sympathetic international actors is essential. Historical precedents show that policy shifts are possible when social movements and political entrepreneurs align to create institutional openings (Demaria et al., 2013).

Commons governance and cooperative economic models offer practical alternatives to marketization, but they require institutional support. Legal recognition of customary rights, access to finance, technical assistance, and supportive procurement policies are necessary to make commons governance viable. Public investment in local processing and infrastructure can reduce dependency on buyer-driven chains, but such investments require fiscal space and political commitment. Debt relief and international climate finance can help create that space, but they must be structured to avoid new conditionalities that undermine sovereignty.

Addressing trade-offs around livelihoods and food security is critical. Phased transitions, social protection measures (basic incomes, employment guarantees), and retraining programs can mitigate social disruption. Pilot projects and place-based experiments can demonstrate viable pathways and build political support. Most importantly, transitions must be co-designed with affected communities to ensure legitimacy and effectiveness. The vignette above illustrates how top-down Blue Economy strategies can produce short-term gains but long-term vulnerabilities; Blue Degrowth insists that transitions be designed to enhance resilience and local provisioning rather than to maximize export earnings.

Political feasibility depends on strategy. Degrowth proposals are often dismissed as utopian or politically unrealistic. Yet history shows that major policy shifts (welfare states, land reforms, environmental regulations) have been achieved through coalition building, social movements, and institutional entrepreneurship. Blue Degrowth requires similar strategies: building alliances across labor, environmental, and community groups; leveraging legal avenues to secure rights; and using pilot successes to scale up reforms. International solidarity and normative pressure, through transnational networks and progressive institutions, can also create enabling conditions.

Finally, research and practice must be iterative. Comparative empirical studies can test the causal mechanisms identified here and refine policy modalities. Interdisciplinary collaborations, combining political ecology, ecological economics, law, and development studies, are essential to design context-sensitive Blue Degrowth interventions. Metrics and monitoring systems must be developed in partnership with communities to ensure they reflect local priorities and ecological realities.

Conclusion

This article has argued that a degrowth political ecology reframes and deepens the critique of the Blue Economy. By centering limits, sufficiency, and anti-colonial delinking, degrowth challenges the Blue Economy’s reliance on absolute decoupling, marketization, and techno-optimism. Political ecology supplies mechanisms (enclosure, spatial fix, and ecologically unequal exchange) that explain how Blue Economy policies can reproduce dispossession and inequality. Together, these literatures point toward a “Blue Degrowth” alternative: a normative and policy framework that prioritizes commons governance, local value retention, precautionary limits on expansion, and redistributive measures to ensure ecological sustainability and social justice.

The contribution of this article is theoretical and synthetic: it consolidates degrowth and political ecology critiques into a coherent program for rethinking ocean governance. The next steps are empirical and political: testing the causal pathways identified here in comparative case studies, developing operational metrics for sufficiency in marine contexts, and exploring political strategies for implementing Blue Degrowth policies in diverse Global South settings. If ocean governance is to be just and sustainable, it must move beyond growth-centric imaginaries and toward plural, place-based alternatives that respect ecological limits and local sovereignty.