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OECD work for a sustainable ocean
To support government efforts to transition to a more sustainable ocean economy, the OECD is mobilising expertise across multiple policy fronts, covering environmental, economic, financial and social dimensions. Working with both developed and developing countries, the OECD aims to ensure that all societies can harness the benefits of the ocean on a sustainable and inclusive basis.

The ocean and its resources are increasingly seen as indispensable to addressing the multiple challenges the planet is set to face in the coming decades. By 2050, the world’s population is projected to be at least 9 billion, with corresponding demands for food, jobs, energy, raw materials and economic growth. The potential of the ocean to help meet these requirements is huge, but the ocean is already under stress from overexploitation, pollution, declining biodiversity and climate change. Care needs to be taken to increase the sustainability of the ocean economy while harnessing its benefits.

The ocean economy is defined by the OECD as the sum of the economic activities of ocean-based industries, together with the assets, goods and services provided by marine ecosystems. These two pillars are interdependent, in that much activity associated with ocean-based industry is derived from marine ecosystems, while industrial activity often impacts marine ecosystems.

The interdependency of ocean-based industries and marine ecosystems combined with increasingly severe threats to the health of the ocean, have led to a growing recognition of the need for an integrated approach to ocean management. Several management strategies have been suggested to achieve this, including Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and Marine Protected Areas (MPA). An accurate and extensive information base on ocean economic activity, the marine environment and the interactions between the two is crucial to each of these strategies, but is often still lacking. Greater understanding of the economic value of marine ecosystems could help spur integrated ocean management in support of sustainability goals, and is gaining more attention at national and international levels.

Robust data will be fundamental to ensuring ocean-based industries and marine ecosystems are managed in an integrated manner. The OECD, in close cooperation with national and international stakeholders, is currently assessing how to improve the socio-economic evidence on ocean industries, building on lessons-learned from its initial ocean economy database, developed in the context of an original OECD foresight project on the ocean economy to 2030.

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Green Growth means fostering economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies. It is also about fostering investments and innovation which will underpin sustained growth and give rise to new economic opportunitites.

The measurment framework takes it points of departure in the sphere of production where economic inputs are transformed into economic output. Included will be the services rendered by ecosystems and natural resurces.

Towards Green Growht

Four areas are identified as main features of green growth:

• Environmental and resource productivtiy
• Economic and environmental assets
• Environmental quality of life
• Economic opportunities and policy responses

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