Capt. Sunday Umoren, Secretary General, Abuja MoU, says the way forward to reap the benefits of the Blue Economy is the realisation that silo mentality will lead nowhere.
Umoren said this during a paper presentation at the 4th Annual Symposium and Workshop of African Marine Environment Sustainability Initiative held on Wednesday in Lagos.
The workshop had the theme: Achieving Blue Growth in a changing climate (Integrating the coastal communities).
He spoke on the topic Collaboration and Partnership in Driving Blue economy.
According to Umoren, without collaboration and partnership, the benefits of the blue economy cannot be properly captured, utilised and sustained.
A nation, in mapping its available resources in its maritime cluster may be limited in its ability to totally or substantially benefit from the abundance in its maritime domain. In addition, maritime-related activities are capital intensive and may require novel ideas and skills that are not readily available.
The demand of the blue economy increases with the distance from the baseline (increasing as its operation theatre moves from coastal areas, the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) to the Deepsea (or high seas).
“In most instances, collaboration and partnerships provide the only means of actualising the prospects of the blue economy,” he said.
He pointed out that collaboration and partnerships could cover these aspects- funding, marketing, shareholding, technology, sustainability, conservation, policy formation, and innovation; including research and developments, logistics, offtaking and any area of mutual agreement.
He added that collaboration should be regulated with international best practices noting that partners would most likely flow through different and arrays of countries guided.
He listed some advantages of collaboration and partnership to include reduced transaction costs and specialisation, utilization of complementarities, utilization of local rivalry, technological transfer, business profitability and others.
He also noted that there could not be any successful impact of the blue economy without a strong enforcement drive.
He also called for a strong enforcement drive for the impact of the blue economy to be successful.
The exploitation and exploration of the oceans have the potential of having great impact on the nation’s revenue and Gross Domestic Product.
However, the ocean faces multiple challenges due to increasing pressure from human actions and impacts, like, over-exploration, over-exploitation, plastic pollution, overfishing, ocean acidification, others.
“These actions and many more are a clear contravention of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”,” he said.
He said that the restoration of sanity in the maritime domain was through having responsible operators which was often not possible but mostly achievable through ‘enforcement’.
He said that enforcement could be done through: review of the constitution, Merchant Shipping Act and other related acts/regulations, strong legal backing with reward and consequence management and others.
