Dear Colleagues,

Recently, a Blue Economy (BE) has been increasingly promoted and pursued globally, regionally and nationally as a contributor to sustainable development. A BE refers to any economic activity located or depending on marine and coastal areas and environments and entails traditional sectors (such as fisheries, shipping, oil and gas extraction and tourism) and emergent ones (such as offshore renewable energy and aquaculture and sea bed mining). Lately, the need for estimating the size of a BE as well as for monitoring assessing the progress of BE towards Sustainable Blue Growth (SBG) is promoted by related policies and strategies, and it is a topic that has attracted the interest of the research community from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. However, there are various challenges that are linked to these kinds of estimations and assessments. For instance, recent discussions are about the need to consider both positive and negative environmental and societal impacts of a BE, except for the economic ones, as the term BE is inextricably linked to the sustainable development concept that requires the balance between economic, environmental and societal goals. The question is how to measure such impacts and their trade-offs and how this could be done at different scales, such as company, sectoral, multi-sectoral, national or regional levels. For instance, is the environmental net benefit taken into account when assessing BE developments and how? Another challenge is that BE developments and decisions towards them can be affected by synergistic or conflicting interactions between various BE sectors, stakeholders and countries that are directly or indirectly involved in such developments. The question here is whether and how these interactions are considered when assessing existing or future BE developments? For instance, are fairness and blue justice taken into account in BE decision making and assessment and how?

This Special Issue aspires to cover topics such as:

a) The status of BE at various scales (sectoral, national, regional, etc.) through, for instance, the mapping of existing or potential BE activities, attempts and practices towards SBG, the identification of drivers that encourage such attempts and practices and barriers that block them and that need to be addressed;

b) Assessment challenges (as mentioned above) that may be covered by reviews and comparisons of methods to assess progress towards SBG and identifications of pros and cons; by the use of existing or the development of new methodologies for addressing such challenges at a theoretical level or with real-world applications;

c) The contribution to the ongoing discussion on what SBG is and what the requirements (such as legal, technical, economic, environmental and governance requirements) are for BE sectors in order to contribute to SBG.

Dr. Zacharoula Kyriazi
Guest Editor

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• blue economy estimation
• blue growth assessment
• marine sustainable development
• marine natural capital valuation
• marine ecosystem services
• synergies and conflicts
• spatial decision making
• stakeholder analysis
• policy integration