Ocean justice: Rethinking global justice from the sea

Abstract

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.