Foresight 9. Blue revolution

Background

During the industrial revolution and again during the “Great Acceleration” (following WWII) technological change allowed rapid development, expansion and the creation of new industries. To date that has largely been constrained to land, with the exception of fisheries… though even those remain the last example of wide spread (globally distributed) hunter-gather behaviour. While there has been activity in the oceans, recent jumps in the level of such activity (see Figure), coinciding with pressure around available resources and space on land, has indicated the (potential) beginning of the “anthropocenisation” of the Oceans – beginning with near shore aquaculture and energy generation and moving further offshore with the development of technologies for open ocean aquaculture and seabed mining.

Scenario

The Oceans become a more human influenced arena – through floating mega platforms (e.g. sea steading communities), artificial land mass creation, autonomously run offshore ports, shipping, undersea mining, energy production plants (whether conventional fossil fuels or renewables). Terrestrial activities such as traditional land use (agriculture, industry etc) and newer installations such as desalination plants – either individually larged or widely spread – will also continue to act to influence (and potentially degrade) near shore waters and coastlines. There is a rise in completely novel uses – such as undersea hydroponics, submarine tourism, offshore “landfill”, water collection points, intense exploitation of mesopelagic micronekton, and other as yet un-thought of industries

Indicators: How would we know this is starting to happen?

Increasing use of the ocean by an increasing number of industries signals this scenario

  1. Number of major industry types harvesting operating in the oceans (e.g. exploiting oceanic resources [minerals, fish, pharmaceuticals] or transporting good, housing etc etc] is as diverse as on land (or more so)
  2. Total value of marine industries in Australia exceeds 100 billion
  3. Total employment in marine industries in Australia exceeds 1 million
  4. Cover or linear length of built infrastructure (rigs, ports, walls, platforms etc) in the oceans exceeds 10% of the coastline
  5. Increasing tension around uses of the oceans and the impacts/benefits of those uses sees the first lawsuit over the exclusion of an entire industry from a region (e.g. fisheries)

Scoring of indicators

Project team only – “score” this scenario (requires login): Click to continue.