Blue Justice and Blue Injustice: Rethinking the Social-Political Dimensions of the Blue Economy

The blue economy and blue growth have emerged globally as dominant policy frameworks promoting economic development through the sustainable use of ocean and coastal resources. While these paradigms promise innovation, prosperity, and climate resilience, growing empirical evidence shows that many blue economy initiatives have also generated profound social, environmental, and governance challenges. These include resource commodification, displacement of coastal communities, labor exploitation, environmental degradation, and widening socio-economic inequalities—dynamics increasingly conceptualized as blue injustice.

At the same time, the emerging concept of blue justice offers an alternative narrative that centers on human rights, social equity, community participation, and environmental stewardship within ocean governance. This thematic issue of Ocean and Society aims to critically examine how blue economy strategies are reshaping societies, livelihoods, institutions, and power relations across diverse geographical contexts. It seeks to move beyond growth-focused narratives by foregrounding justice, governance, and lived social realities in ocean-based development.

We invite interdisciplinary contributions from the marine social sciences, political economy, environmental justice, maritime governance, development studies, maritime law, marine policy, and sustainability science. Submissions may address theoretical foundations of blue justice, governance and regulatory frameworks, impacts on coastal and small-scale fishing communities, labor conditions and gender dimensions, port-city relations, tourism pressures, environmental pollution, and comparative national and regional blue economy policies. Contributions on community resistance, participatory governance, and alternative pathways for inclusive and equitable ocean development are especially encouraged.

By bringing together critical perspectives from both the Global North and South, this thematic issue seeks to advance a more socially accountable and ethically grounded understanding of the ocean economy. It aims to inform scholarship, policy debates, and practical interventions toward building truly inclusive, just, and sustainable ocean futures.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Ocean and Society is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.