Ocean Justice: Rethinking Global Justice from the Sea

Abstract

Discussions of global justice urgently need to include the question of the sea, and to foreground the concept of ocean justice. The ocean is discussed here as a site from which to address planetary environmental destruction, issues of global inequality and racialised violence - but also as a political laboratory from which radical alternatives to the current global order may emerge. Discussion focuses on the Blue New Deal; Blue Acceleration - the current, largely unregulated, push for growth from ocean-based industries including fossil fuel extraction, the exploitation of marine genetic resources, and industrial fishing; maritime migration and the racialised sea; the lack of regulation of the high seas; the possibilities this creates for radical sea alternatives-for reimagining the sea and ocean justice from the perspective of maritime civil society. Through a New Blue Deal, the ocean can be a starting point for addressing both the global ecological crisis and issues of global injustice.