Authors: Svein Jentoft
Professor emeritus at the UiT – The Arctic University of Norway and TBTI Co-founder
If people in small-scale fisheries wish to make the Blue Economy work for them, they must take control of the language, to avoid a rhetoric that further marginalizes them.
"The true meaning of the Blue Economy is not to be found in glossy pamphlets, seductive language and political statements about the ocean as a new frontier for economic growth, but in how the Blue Economy works in practice, like for people in small-scale fisheries communities... We need a concept like Blue Justice to bring attention to an issue of utmost importance to small-scale fisheries, which cannot simply be defined away and by that, ignored... You cannot say that marginalization is not what the Blue Economy means if that is what it does to small-scale fisheries… Without the Blue Justice concept, there is a bigger risk that small-scale fisheries get overrun in the Blue Economy language game, a game they cannot afford to lose."
