Articulating alternatives to the anti-politics of blue growth

This viewpoint article presents a critique of and response to the discourse of blue growth. First, we analyze the underlying logics of blue growth discourse through the lens of concepts from three key thinkers in development studies: James Ferguson, Kasia Paprocki, and James Scott. We draw on Ferguson’s concept of ‘anti-politics’, Paprocki’s concept of ‘anticipatory ruination’, and Scott’s insights on how high modernist ideology and the administrative ordering of nature and society are used as state-crafting tools, and show how similar processes play a role in assembling blue growth, using examples. Second, we explore an emergent counternarrative to blue growth - blue justice - and two bodies of thought and practice that provide complementary perspectives: ‘riverhood’, which we recast as oceanhood, and ‘rights of nature’. We contend that oceanhood and rights of nature can complement and extend prior blue justice critiques of, and reactions to, blue growth.