BLUE ECONOMY
$24 trillion – the ocean’s total asset base.
$2.5 trillion – the ocean’s annual global GMP (gross marine product).
But two-thirds of the ocean’s GMP depends on healthy seas.^8
90% of global trade is sea-borne.^4
Air freight creates 100 times more CO 2 than shipping per kilometre and
weight of cargo.^4
Much more of our power could come from the sea:
The numbers of tourists vacationing
on ships has grown rapidly^4
FUTURE PROSPECTS?
$6.4 billion – estimated global market in marine biotech by
2025.^9
10% of the world’s minerals could come from sea floors by
2030.^10
Metal reserves in millions of metric tons^4
MARINE PROTECTION
ALERT!
Falling short
4.8% of the world’s oceans are protected in 2019.^11
10% is the modest UN target for 2020.^11
30% by 2030 is what’s needed.^12
1 Smithsonian, ‘Census of Marine Life’, July 2019, nin.tl/census-overview
2 Esther Gonstalla, The Ocean Book: How Endangered are our Seas? oekon,
2018 3 National Geographic, ‘Half the Barrier Reef is Dead’, August 2018,
nin.tl/barrier-reef 4 Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Ocean Atlas: Facts and Figures on
the Threats to Our Marine Ecosystem, 2017, nin.tl/ocean-atlas
5 IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species, iucnredlist.org 6 Marine Insight,
‘10 Endangered Ocean Species’, 15 February 2019, nin.tl/endangered
7 Eunomia, ‘Plastics in the Marine Environment’, 1 June 2016,
nin.tl/plastic-in-sea 8 WWF, Reviving the Ocean Economy Report 2015,
nin.tl/Ocean-economy 9 University of British Columbia Institute for Oceans
and Fisheries, ‘Vast majority of patents on marine genetic sequences linked
to corporations’, 6 June 2018, nin.tl/marine-genes 10 Frontiers in Marine
Science, ‘An Overview of Seabed Mining’, 10 January 2018,
nin.tl/seabed-mining 11 Atlas of Marine Protection, mpatlas.org
12 Greenpeace International, 30x30: A Blueprint for Ocean Protection,
4 April 2019, nin.tl/Blueprint
THE FACTS
25
20
15
10
5
0
1980
Total in millions
1990
= 2 million passengers
2000 2010 2020
Q UK
Q Germany
Q Canada
Q Belgium
Q China
Q Netherlands
Q Portugal
Q Sweden
Q South Korea
Q Denmark
Q USA
Q On land
But the potential damage to the ocean ecosystem of seabed
mining is incalculable.
Q In the sea
(sum of estimated metal reserves in the Prime Crust
Zone (PCZ) and the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ)
Oceans of Energy – approved
projects, by country,
in 1,000kW^4
Wind
power
Wave
power
Tidal
power
427
9 5
3
3 0.8
0.71.4
202
712
5,067
102
44
41
3,295
1,271
1,015
20
11
5,830
7, 0 7 6
230
306
5.4
0.0011
31
260
94
20.5
Manganese (Mn)
Cobalt (Co)
Rare Earth
Oxides
Thallium (T)
Nickel (Ni)
SEPTEMBER- OCTOBER 2019 25