Ocean and coastal resources are integral to sustaining life on Earth, but they are in a state of emergency because of governance and management failures compounded by low institutional capacity. Oceans and coastal resources are vital for inclusive growth, jobs, and food and nutrition security. However, the sustainability of these resources is undermined by fragmented policies that are made ineffective by legal and regulatory gaps and overlapping institutional mandates. As a result, oceans and coastal areas have been treated as limitless resources and largely cost-free repositories of waste. This challenge is exacerbated by the delayed response to and mounting threats of climate change.

International actors have progressively proposed using a blue economy approach to address ocean and coastal governance failures. Although there is no single definition of the blue economy, international actors have coalesced around the need to ensure the health of ocean and coastal resources to support the environmentally sustainable and socially equitable development of coastal and marine areas. Blue economy implies a shift from sector-led to integrated approaches that require sector coordination to identify synergies and manage trade-offs among resource user groups and development aims.

World Bank Articulation of the Blue Economy

The World Bank adopted a blue economy approach in 2016 and subsequently helped lift a progressive blue economy concept out of country workshops and onto the world stage. The World Bank heightened the credibility of the blue economy concept through analytics, often financed by bilateral partners. These analytics, mostly regional, presented the potential of the blue economy to achieve balanced economic, environmental, and social development aims in coastal and marine areas.

However, the World Bank’s corporate definition of the blue economy falls short of articulating key tenets of the blue economy that are expressed in its own analytics and that are increasingly being communicated by key partners. These missing tenets include references to the restorative potential of the blue economy, inclusion, equity, and the need for integrated approaches. The World Bank’s corporate definition also appears to be decoupled from pressing food and nutrition security, climate change, biodiversity, and circular economy goals.

Clearly articulating the holistic purpose of the blue economy is important because clients are using the World Bank’s corporate definition to inform their own blue economy strategies, and key partners rely on the World Bank to communicate its more holistic aim. Clearly articulating the more holistic definition of the blue economy is also important so that World Bank management and staff consistently communicate the more holistic concept in client-facing engagements.

Although the blue economy is being referenced in most SIDS SCDs and is slowly emerging in those for coastal states, low comprehensiveness of the concept is limiting its ability to be used as a policy framing tool. Although most SIDS and some coastal nation SCDs refer to the blue economy, the persistent tendency to address sector issues in silos hinders opportunities to identify synergies and manage trade-offs across the World Bank portfolio. This low comprehensiveness of the concept is also reflected in SCDs’ tendencies to cite the potential of emerging sectors (for example, offshore energy) without considering trade-offs.

The blue economy can play a significant role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, but the World Bank’s CCDRs are being underused as a tool to help clients achieve this aim. CCDRs also only partially identify risks posed by climate change to marine and coastal areas and often do not diagnose the potential risks posed by emerging sectors to the marine environment.

The World Bank’s commitment to the blue economy is also not clearly articulated in its evolution. The importance of the blue economy is not reflected in the September 2023 Development Committee paper “Ending Poverty on a Livable Planet: Report to Governors on World Bank Evolution,” which outlines the World Bank’s mission to support a livable planet (World Bank 2023a). Its newly launched Global Challenge Program on Forests for Development, Climate, and Biodiversity does not refer to the blue economy, and actions on biodiversity and nature do not refer to coastal or ocean resources.

World Bank Operationalization of the Blue Economy

The World Bank demonstrated how to effectively engage on blue economy development using a governance approach in the Eastern Caribbean. This effective approach focused on harmonizing and developing blue economy policies and practices as a precursor to sector lending.

Elsewhere, the use of sector entry points in marine and coastal areas has achieved sector results, but these entry points have not been leveraged to support policy and institutional reforms critical for blue economy development. Most governments are just beginning to establish coherent policy, strategy, and institutional mechanisms for effective blue economy development. With few exceptions, such as in Morocco and OECS, World Bank operations in these countries are achieving sector results but are not yet being leveraged to support sector transitions involving needed coordination to achieve blue economy aims.

There have also been critical gaps between the launch of influential blue economy analytics and operational support that have hindered blue economy development. Maintaining country engagement is important because the blue economy approach requires a strong shift in practices and mentalities and often involves policy and institutional reforms that can face resistance. Engagement challenges are associated with the limited number of staff with blue economy expertise, staff rotations, and Country Management Unit buy-in for the concept.

The World Bank has updated much of its relevant sector guidance to incorporate blue economy principles, but thus far, uptake is uneven:

• The designs of small-scale fisheries projects are increasingly aligned with progressive global fisheries guidance that is capable of achieving blue economy aims. Consistent application of this guidance can promote more holistic designs for some projects that retain a growth aim and the enhanced integration of climate change considerations.
• The World Bank’s global plastics analytics and estimation models are being used by policy makers to tackle plastic pollution. The World Bank has used development policy lending to address marine plastics issues in SIDS, but this policy support has yet to be extended to coastal nations that rank as major contributors to plastic waste production.
• The World Bank’s updated analytics on blue tourism support a more holistic approach, but with few exceptions, marine and coastal tourism operations are paying insufficient attention to upstream environmental issues, such as water use and waste.
• Aspects of the blue economy in the marine transport space—such as decarbonization and greening of ports—have been covered in analytics, but operational uptake is low.

The PROBLUE multidonor trust fund occupies a unique and potentially transformative role in financing blue economy development, but there is room to enhance its strategic relevance and impact. The main trust fund vehicle for supporting the blue economy in the World Bank, PROBLUE has effectively supported the development of blue economy analytics and has increasingly diversified its grants to achieve more holistic blue economy aims. PROBLUE and its governance body are implicated in the need to consistently communicate the more holistic meaning of the blue economy. A more strategic approach involves, among other things, identifying and addressing policy and institutional gaps that underpin blue economy development and deepening PROBLUE’s support for relevant sector investments.

These findings lead to the following three recommendations:

• At a corporate level, the World Bank should articulate its commitment to helping clients achieve the more holistic meaning of the blue economy, including by updating its corporate definition and ensuring that the concept is consistently articulated in relevant country engagements. An update of the corporate definition would include acknowledging the restorative potential of the blue economy, inclusion, equity, and the need for integrated approaches, while also clarifying links to pressing food and nutrition security, climate change, biodiversity, and circular economy goals. It would also require the World Bank to ensure that relevant management and staff working in coastal and marine areas can understand, own, and consistently articulate the merits of the blue economy agenda to clients in country-facing engagements.
• The World Bank should proactively support a holistic blue economy approach in coastal and marine areas. World Bank management should ensure that blue economy diagnostics are used to inform key country diagnostics and country strategies, where relevant. Country Management Units should ensure that there is coherence across sector operations implemented in coastal and marine areas to help clients maximize the restorative and inclusive development potential of the blue economy and to help manage trade-offs. Global Practices should ensure that projects implemented in coastal and marine areas are designed and implemented in line with progressive blue economy guidance. Both should aim to situate these portfolios of projects within wider participatory spatial planning processes to ensure equitable and sustainable development outcomes.
• The World Bank should work more effectively with partners engaged in the blue economy space to help clients develop needed policy and institutional reforms to achieve blue economy aims. This entails the collective identification and the addressing of policy and institutional gaps that currently undermine blue economy development through effective partnering with regional organizations, multilateral development banks, and bilateral agencies. Suitable policy reform will be especially important in the face of emerging industries (for example, offshore renewables and deep-sea mining) and new technologies in the blue economy space.