The ocean and its sea space have enormous economic potential for clean energy production, development of marine products and services and the exploitation of large marine resources, as well as providing leisure, food and social welfare for their bordering populations. The equitable use of marine resources is essential and to ensure this, European sea basins must be analysed and planned holistically. The European Blue Growth Strategy (European Commission, 2017) is a long-term strategy promoting sustainable and equitable economic growth for the marine environment and the maritime sectors. Accordingly, opportunities for ocean-based development rely on: the generation of new expertise and jobs; improved clean energy supply from oceans; support for local production and supply chains, and increased competitiveness and technological innovation (European Commission, 2019). From 2007-2019, the EU estimates ¹ that the Blue Economy’s (hereafter BE) core sectors (ocean energy, aquaculture, marine biotechnology, deep sea mining and coastal tourism) have contributed to 4 million jobs and almost €180 billion of Gross Value Added (GVA) (EU Maritime Affairs). European sea basin strategies such as the Atlantic Action Plan provide Research and Innovation Agendas, which aim to guide blue growth and support EU coastal countries in the development of new jobs and expertise (Atlantic Strategy, 2020)

Although policymakers, public administrations and researchers emphasise the importance of the Blue Economy, our study finds there is still no consistent definition of the Blue Economy concept, and this lack of cohesion is potentially leading to a lack of awareness and adoption of the Blue Economy as a complete industrial sector. As such the BE is often sub-divided into established/traditional sectors (aquaculture, fishery related activity, ports, ship building, oil and gas extraction, coastal tourism, maritime transport, etc…) or emerging new sectors (e.g., blue biotechnology, desalination, renewable energy, coastal and environmental protection). However, the existing set of instruments used to ensure an organized use of human activities at sea and sustainable and ecosystem-based use of marine resources (e.g., marine spatial planning, data and monitoring, ecosystem-based management principles), are not always applied consistently to promote blue growth across sectors (O’Higgins et al., 2019; Bennett et al., 2019; Zuercher et al., 2022).

The ongoing BE challenges require an increased understanding of how to manage oceans equitably, along with an awareness that sustainability can only be effective if ‘collaboration is maintained across borders, marine sectors and stakeholders’ (WWF, 2020). Like any transnational governance process, the progress of blue growth strategies requires the engagement of stakeholders at an intra and supra-national level (e.g., Atlantic Strategy, Mer Littoral 2030 – French National Strategy for Sea & Coast) for the development of a shared vision of the marine environment as a resource and to create the necessary knowledge-driven management mechanisms to ensure investment certainty with ample opportunities for innovation.

The aim of this research is to assess the North East Atlantic Area’s (NEAA) BE stakeholder landscape through the application of a novel, mixed-method approach. This comprises: an examination of stakeholder type, role and sectoral-foci and the derivation of a sea basin level stakeholder topography to support blue growth and economic development at a regional, national and EU-level.

Our study provides a novel interpretation of the NEAA BE and its respective development strategies by:

• a systematic collection of stakeholder data

•carrying out a sea basin level stakeholder analysis (including local, regional, national and international, and spanning five different countries)

• providing a geo-spatial representation of the BE landscape and

• presenting existing financial support mechanisms in the NEAA for the BE sectors of aquaculture, coastal tourism, ocean energy and marine biotechnology and an illustrative case study that demonstrates EU Blue Growth strategy in action (Accelerating Growth through Innovation – EU-ERDF) (Marine-I, 2017).

Within this study we adapt the European BE definition, as ‘economic activities related to ocean, sea and coasts’ (Atlantic Strategy, 2020). In the Annex 1 we provide a set of alternative definitions of the concept.

We present the economic opportunities and challenges within the BE, including an overview of financial support mechanisms on national and EU-level available in the NEAA, and discuss levels and types of support provided to five main BE sectors defined within the European BE report. Our results will enable decision-makers to better understand the state of the BE in their region and inform strategic decisions accordingly.

Oceans are pivotal to the development of our societies, our economies and our welfare. Historically nations with access to the oceans have enjoyed greater trading wealth and have developed exploration and colonisation far beyond their original borders. Extended territories, division of land and the subsequent implementation of sometimes arbitrary political boundaries, have all contributed to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardins, 1968). Dating back to economic theories of the mid-19^th century (Lloyd, 1833), but made popular in recent years by Ostrom’s seminar work (Ostrom, 2009) on public choice, institutionalism and the relationship with the commons (a term used to represent common resources such as air, sunlight, wind but also water, forests, the oceans etc.), the tragedy relates to the over-use and exploitation of resources. Problems of equitable ocean use were first identified with issues of over-fishing in small sea catchments, but then amplified into public view in the 1970s relating to pollution and other issues in the Mediterranean (Hass, 1989), where waste from one nation polluted sea space of another. These ‘enclosed-sea’ issues soon shed light on wider problems in the larger interconnected oceans, bringing about a realisation that with extensive tidal modelling and the analysis of ocean currents, our global sea area can be effectively considered as interconnected sea basins (Clemente, 2012). Exploring rational choice in international development and searching for resolutions for equitable division, systems-level and catchment-level analysis are encouraged through high-level assessment, modelling and collaborative international governance (Araral, 2014).

The awareness of Blue Economy as a sector has grown in the past 10 years. Defined by the United Nations (UN) as the ‘economic activities that comprise of economic sectors and policies that determine whether the use of the ocean is sustainable’, the Blue Economy is now ‘front and centre’ on the world’s economic stage. There are, however, significant disparities at a definition level (see Supplementary Material , Annex 1 ). Although, all definitions identify the economic and social role of marine ecosystems, some include regulations related to marine resource use, sustainability and protection of the marine environment, but this does not appear in more practical definitions. Thus, a key gap in the understanding of the BE is a consistent definition as an economic sector, which also clearly identifies contributing sectors influencing blue growth (OECD, 2016; Smith-Godfrey, 2016; The World Bank Document, 2017; Keen et al., 2018; EU-MAF, 2019; WWF, 2020).

With considerable policy interest in stimulating blue growth and developing the BE, but with an imperative to develop a supranational sea basin approach, our aim is therefore to inform the development agenda for sea basins and equitable ocean use by undertaking a systematic collection of stakeholder information and creating a Stakeholder Directory. This requires developing a novel approach for assessing activity at a sea basin level, capable of collating and amalgamating data from local, regional, national and international stimulus. This includes identifying provisions that create, enhance or fuel blue growth.

The Atlantic Ocean stretches between the Americas and Europe in the North and Africa in the South. This vast area covering approximately one fifth of the earth’s surface, is generally subdivided into two sea basins of the north and south and two subsequent divisions of East (Europe) and the West (North America). Our project focuses on the Eastern, North Atlantic sea basin (excluding the Norwegian Sea and Iceland) which for the purposes of this study is entitled the North East Atlantic Area (NEAA) ( Figure 1 ).

This area was selected in our study due to being one of the most densely populated and economically important sea basins in the world. It includes five economically wealthy and traditionally maritime nations, who, at the time of data collection were all active member of the European Union [United Kingdom (UK), France (FR), Ireland (IE), Portugal (PT) and Spain (ES)]. As with many of the most widely utilised sea spaces, the NEAA catchment is an important area for analysis, particularly with the growing recognition of the rapid development of BE in these countries ( Table 1 ). The area is also rich in marine life and contains unique habitats of high ecological biodiversity (Johnsen et al., 2002), such as cold-water coral reefs and deep-sea sponge aggregations (Frank et al., 2010; Ramiro-Sánchez et al., 2019). The Gulf Stream is the dominating ocean circulation phenomenon conveying nutrients and warm, oxygen-rich water to EU coasts (OSPAR Commission, 2000). The NEAA is therefore seen as a strategic area for BE development with multiple maritime sectors active in its sea space, including maritime shipping (MMO. Mapping UK Shipping Density and Routes from AIS., 2014) and fishery and tourism (Calado et al., 2019; MSP-Platform, 2020). There are also new, rapidly growing sectors in the area such as ocean renewable energy (van den Burg et al., 2017; Pınarbaşı et al., 2019) and aquaculture (Hambrey and Evans, 2016; Schupp et al., 2019).

Our overarching stakeholder analysis presents national, regional and/or local mechanisms for support. However, to illustrate how a BE network can be an effective mechanism across a range of sectors and within various economic activities focussed on marine technology opportunities, new jobs, new products, development of new and existing business and innovation, we present the UK regional Marine-I programme. Established to create an enduring innovative marine technology sector in the domain of ocean energy in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, UK, Marine I aims to help businesses embrace the emerging opportunities meeting global goals for growth and sustainable development by 2030 (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015; Lee et al., 2020). The region has high blue growth potential focussed on marine energy, marine manufacturing, maritime operations and marine environmental technologies. The marine sector contributes over £500M to the GDP of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, and the county is pioneering ground-breaking marine-tech projects. Marine-I supports local marine technology businesses through research, development and innovation to develop their ideas to product demonstration and commercialisation. Six partners have worked in collaboration, building on the success of the first Marine-I programme (2017-2019), which lead to continuation with the ongoing European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) support from 2020 to 2023. The first phase was partly funded by ERDF with £5.7M and the continuation obtained an additional £4.1M grant ( Figure 6 ). The Marine-I unique team, which brings outstanding expertise in the marine industry and world-class test facilities, includes University of Exeter (the project lead partner), University of Plymouth, Falmouth Marine School, Cornwall Marine Network, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and Cornwall Development Company. The available support compromises from: 1) RD&I support that includes input from the field-leading scientists, access to test facilities, business and operational guidance; 2) subsidised graduate staff placements; 3) access to Marine Challenge Fund (MCF) to support SMEs commercialisation roots of early-stage innovations; 4) support in marketing activities through event support. The programme allowed for engagement of 139 marine businesses that included business assists, a support of new enterprises, business grants, as well as created 15 new jobs and 12 new products to market ( Figure 6 ).

The NEAA BE economic ecosystem has been evaluated based on the detailed analysis of the stakeholders, their roles, their sector of engagements and potential scale of influence. The analysis, viewed from an international perspective was challenging due to imprecise definition of BE and its reinterpretations to favour individual elements. A major challenge is that BE has not been considered as an industrial sector on its own, but composed of different sectors (directly and indirectly connected to the sectors’ supply chain) and with organisations undertaking multiple stakeholder roles. Consecutively, BE is a relatively new concept, still in constant evolution, which leads to a debate, even at a conceptual level: for example, institutions like EU or OECD define BE as economic activities, anchored into specific assets, while other organisations (WWF or World Bank for example) take a more sustainability, or enviro-contextual dimension. This leads to a very complex multiplicity of stakeholder roles and actions. Equally confusing is the variety of definitions of BE, presented by different international/national/regional agencies. The requirement to define BE as a sector must therefore be a collaboration across borders and between sectors, enabled through various multi-faceted partnerships, guided by an aggregated understanding of BE at an international as well as a national and regional level. This study’s analysis is a first step for stakeholders to realise the importance of the BE as sector, to identify others involved in the sector, and to recognise the potential for collaborations and multi-use platforms. Without this sectoral perspective however, whilst BE is a new and rapidly evolving concept, it may not become tied intrinsically to sustainable, equitable ocean practices (e.g., WWF World Bank definition, Annex 1 ). For Blue Growth to fuel our economies a careful and responsible use of marine resources is essential to prevent their degradation, pollution and overexploitation and therefore ensuring a long-term capacity of oceans to supply goods and services that sustain human health and well-being (95). This requisite dualism of the definition is confirmed in our diverse, international information sources and the detailed engagement with the respective BE stakeholder. Accordingly, our use of diverse information sources for the design of the BE stakeholder directory, enlarges our understanding of regional clusters and extends the BG agenda more internationally.

The stakeholders’ analysis also demonstrates a need for a more in-depth sea basin investigation, to better understand the more granular BE stakeholder landscape of the extended Atlantic Area. This will lead to further design of policies acting across wider sea basins and realising the potential and priorities in sectoral specialisation (driven by public-private partnerships, cross-country knowledge exchange and capacity building) accessing funding at an EU level and creating available funding for investment, development projects, inter-firm collaborations (across the evolving BE value chain). Examining the Marine-I case study, it is evident that identification and creation of opportunities for collaborations within the BE as a sector, when coupled with accessible financial support mechanisms, can contribute to a local BE growth required for key NEAA regions to succeed in global markets in the medium and long term.

In recent years, substantial opportunities and funding have been provided for the analysis and demonstration of other types of ocean-based multi-use platforms (Zanuttigh et al., 2016; Winder and Le Heron, 2017; Schupp et al., 2019), however, ideally, only financial instruments that support a synergic co-location or interaction of maritime activities in the same geographic area (e.g., offshore wind energy and aquaculture) will promote mutual benefits for the sectors engaged in the BE. For example, recent projects, such as H2020 MUSES (Multi Use of European Seas) explore opportunities and challenges of Multi-Use implementation for Blue Growth (Schultz-Zehden et al., 2018), or MUSICA (Multiple Use of Space for Island Clean Autonomy) provides a test site for synergic use of BE sectors within a multi-use platform (e.g., renewable energy devices supporting shipping infrastructure or aquaculture facilities). Multi-use sea areas have the fundamental advantage of combining biotic and abiotic marine resource exploitation in sea areas, where any single sector may not create the win-win conditions required (Depellegrin et al., 2019). Our research however, evidenced very little multi-use sea basin level stakeholder activity beyond policy-level rhetoric. Examining our stakeholders in more detail identified even wider disconnects. We noted 72% of stakeholders provide financial support independently across sectors, outside of BE sectoral definitions – with the least focussed being public institutions (EU and national) and national research institutions. This is perhaps due to the emerging nature of the BE, but we need our national/regional public institutions to be promotors, and implementers, of BE strategies and marine spatial plans and also enforcers of Atlantic Area strategies. This policy-funding disconnect is especially worrying as whilst sector-neutral support mechanisms (accessible to any sector) are important for supply-chain integrity, they do not reinforce the aggregation of marine and maritime activity towards the BE. Moreover, public authorities at an EU and national/regional level seem to give primary importance to the socio-environmental impact of the funding support provided at a project-level, which in turn amplifies a lack of BE sectoral aggregation. While this demonstrates funding impact and thus encourages likelihood of commitment from private actors, having BE sector-oriented (and BE sub-sector oriented) funding would contribute to the acceleration of BE growth and demonstrate a unified, international attitude to BE potential. This would be particularly relevant for the technology-driven sectors (e.g., ocean energy, aquaculture, marine biotechnology) and would lead to better monitoring of the implementation and sustainability challenges of BE activities.

The knowledge produced in this study on the multi-sectoral BE stakeholder landscape may further help to address the sustainability challenges, in terms of the equitable use of ocean resources. In particular, the co-use of diverse ocean resources and their socio-cultural and economic benefits should be further explored. This could occur through the application of the UN-SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) to understand how different sectors perform in different geographic areas and their performance relative to particular SDGs (Lee et al., 2020).

As the Atlantic region is both ecologically and socio-economically a very diverse region (Calado et al., 2019), we suggest financial support mechanism should be better designed towards the resource-dependency of the beneficiaries acting in a specific geographic area and the dependency to specific biotic and abiotic marine resources. This may lead also to geographical and sectorial specialisations that can provide new research and innovation opportunities, showcasing products, services and qualifications with a high value in the NEAA territory and beyond. We do note however, that limited financial instruments actively support soft multi-use deployment on a local scale – for example the Community-led Local Development (CLLD) and pescatourism (small scale fishery or aquaculture and coastal tourism) activities are focussed on enhancement of the natural/cultural heritage with sustainable seafood harvesting or production in a very localised area.

By exploring BE stakeholder activities in NEAA we were able to identify regional clusters, such as London and South-Western England in UK, Dublin in Ireland, Bretagne and Pays de la Loire in France, Galicia In Spain and Porto and Lisbon area in Portugal. By adopting an international geo-spatial approach to regional and local developments, further opportunities can be explored to promote knowledge exchange, supply chain integration and complementation. In particular this study can promote existing research and innovation competences across territories and can also complement existing BE Clusters and the development of new ones. The knowledge can further be promoted through the identification of funding mechanisms for stakeholders in the different territories and thus contribute to the consolidation of clusters.

Finally, metropolitan areas play an important role in the development of specialized clusters. In particular, the cities can offer a diversified workforce, networking possibilities and provide better proximity and reachability across the region through different transport vectors (Doloreux and Shearmur, 2009). In addition, metropolitan areas and capitals in the countries of the Atlantic area often refer to decisional and financial centres of the country that are of importance also for peripheral Atlantic regions. The main urban areas of the study area include Dublin (Ireland), London and Edinburgh (United Kingdom), Lisbon (Portugal), Paris and Nantes (France) and Madrid and Vigo (Spain). Clusters in metropolitan areas also benefit from proximity to governmental institutions and to university backed projects and market activities as consequence of major investment. Also of note is Brussels, which includes central institutions in support of the BE on a European level as well as being important for the Atlantic Area. Interestingly, BE clustering in Spain is evenly spread along the coast and on the islands which is result of many regionally available funds ( Annex 4 ).

Our research presents a first pass at systematic collection of information sources focused on the Blue Economy stakeholders in the North East Atlantic Area. Our conclusions, which we acknowledge are based on imperfect and to some extent, partially incomplete data sets do provide us with some strong conclusions. Firstly, whilst international policy is placing emphasis on the Blue Economy and growth, we note there is disparity at a definition level. We have endeavoured to reduce this disparity with our definition of the BE, and thus ratified this across NEAA area accordingly. Secondly, we also conclude that whilst BE economy policy focus is evident at an international level, national and regional initiatives in the respective countries are not fully aligned, comprehended and this exploited. This, we suggest is partially due to a reluctance within policymakers to revisit existing sectoral definitions to create new sectors and new support mechanisms. It could also be due, partially, to recent populist political trends toward reinforcing the national agenda, or alternatively merely due to a need for a ‘champagne tower’ approach, where high volumes of rhetoric are required at a policy level for the message to reach the lower, geographically distributed tiers. Finally, we also conclude that it is essential, for the success of the BE and equitable, international blue growth that a sea basin approach be adopted for planning, analysis, and action. In drawing together the data in our study, the challenges of a such approach were highly evident. Developing the first stakeholder data set of this type for marine and maritime activity however, has allowed us to begin to make international level comparisons and also identify potential national level disparity that is previously unexplored. Whilst issues will always occur when comparing different countries and thus different economic areas, comparison at a sea basin level is one of the mechanisms that could lead to understanding equitable use of what a shared resource is in essence.

In terms of the limitations of our work, although the research provides valuable insights in the compositions of BE roles across different NEAA regions, further research is necessary to understand the factual contribution to the BE, in terms of detailed financial support measures, industrial activity, employment and wealth creation at a BE sector level. We acknowledge our work falls short of this detailed financial cross comparison. We do suggest however that these information sources could readily complement our database and could use our mixed-data and geo-spatial approach to create a vibrant BE economic model. This would require additional techniques for data collection, either through company-wide databases and or more effective engagement methods through workshops, focus groups and interviews with relevant actors. This additional information would allow decision-makers to better understand importance of the BE for national and regional economies by mobilising hard economic data and contribute to better understand the fragmentation of BE sectors. In light of current global challenges for the NEAA, driven by Brexit and the COVID-19 recovery, the knowledge we have amassed can be further used to address the effect of the phenomenon on BE sectors, localize its main area of effects through geospatially explicit representations and in future address impacts on supply chain and resource demand for the NEAA BE sectors. The coupled geospatial analysis performed in this study can further contribute to the identification of regional sector or multi-sector clusters and therefore to enhance strategies, policies and financial programs aiming at a sectoral support to the regional BE.

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because the data contain stakeholder names, addresses and affiliation not to be distributed. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to a.zawalna-geer@exeter.ac.uk.

DD: Investigation, Writing - original draft, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. AZ-G: Writing – final draft, review and editing. AA: writing – second draft, review and editing, Methodology, Formal analysis. DR-P: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. AD-V: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. BT: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. AG: Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. KH: Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. EM: Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. IA: Writing - review and editing. LJ: Formal analysis, Writing - review and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This study was financed by FANBEST Project (http://www.fanbest.eu) - Funding Atlantic Network of Blue Economy Technology Transfer (EAPA 1022/2018; INTERREG Atlantic Area ERDF).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.