Getting Blue from Brown: India’s Struggle to Recolor the Economy

Abstract

It took nearly twenty years for the blue economy (BE) as an economic ideology, introduced by Gunter Pauli in 1994, to gain pervasive recognition. At the 2012 Rio+20 Third Earth Summit, the United Nations (UN) defined the blue economy in terms of its two primary characteristics: blue, which denotes the ocean or marine environment, and economy, referring to the overall economy. The seas, which comprise over 95% of the biosphere and more than 72% of the planet, have a critical role in maintaining GDP, regulating the climate, and driving economic prosperity (C. Kontovas, 2022). The sustaining utilisation of marine assets to support and progress the economy, occupations, and professions while maintaining the health of the ocean biome is referring to as the “Blue Economy” (BE) (WB, 2022). Alternatively, in Europe, all economic activity involving seas is classified as BE (EC, 2020). In South Asia, the notion of the Blue Economy—a systematic approach to harnessing ocean resources—is relatively recent.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199651593.2025.6-22