Bridging Knowledge Gaps towards 2030: The Use of Foresight for the Strategic Management of a Sustainable Blue Economy

Lisa A. Pace (), Kristian Borch and Alan Deidun
Additional contact information
Lisa A. Pace: The Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking and Innovation, University of Malta, MSD2080 Msida, Malta
Kristian Borch: Department of Planning, University of Aalborg, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark
Alan Deidun: Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malta, MSD2080 Msida, Malta

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 13, 1-20

Abstract: There is need to better understand the trends and future challenges influencing the marine and coastal environments and identify the opportunities to develop innovative sustainability-oriented solutions to address these. Alongside mainstream decision support tools used in environmental management and conservation sciences, foresight techniques provide comprehensive and well-rounded information and knowledge about likely developments in the long-term future. This study uses a horizon scanning exercise to explore emerging signals and trends of future developments and innovation for the sustainable development of the blue economy looking towards 2030. It derives a series of global developments, challenges and opportunities relating to the blue economy from a review of high-level international reports and studies. Through a workshop conducted with 29 scientists and researchers based in maritime universities in six countries in Europe, the study identifies and prioritizes emerging signals and trends considered of high impact for a sustainability transition. The outputs include a synthesis of 11 global developments in the blue economy and 7 cross-cutting trends and trend projections. These may be valuable to marine scientists as a source of inspiration for a future research agenda or can be used as evidence for decision- and policymakers to deal with future uncertainties about the growth of the blue economy.

Keywords: foresight; blue economy; horizon scanning; trends; science and innovation; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/10026/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/10026/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:13:p:10026-:d:1178576

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().