Ocean grabbing: the blue economy and the new frontiers of dispossession in the Global South

This research analyzes how marine-coastal grabbing processes are manifested and justified in different maritorios of the Global South, based on a documentary and comparative review of case studies. The work is situated in the field of political ecology oriented to the oceans and is based on the assumption that the so-called "blue economy" operates as a new device for the expansion of capital framed in the discourse of sustainability. In the cases considered, the forms and processes of legitimization of ocean grabbing, dispossession, privatization and commodification of the marine and coastal commons are systematized and cross-referenced. The research consisted of a critical review of thirteen scholarly articles from the political ecology literature that together bring together nineteen case studies. Common elements were sought and identified in terms of dispossession processes, actors involved, as well as the legitimizing frameworks and types and sectors of capital involved. The cases reviewed, from Latin America, Africa and Asia, show how the literature in this field evidences common patterns of grabbing that combine old and new forms of coloniality and legitimating narratives, in the context of the expansion of tourism, aquaculture, industrial fisheries, as well as blue carbon markets and marine protected areas. The results show that ocean grabbing constitutes a contemporary process of accumulation by dispossession that reconfigures territorial, legal, cultural and economic maritoriums of the Global South.


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