Exploring community based approaches to the Blue Economy

Before embarking on a journey to build a community based approach to a Blue Economy we felt it was important to first understand where we had come from and where we are now. We examined the historical role of maritime businesses on the NSW South Coast and the existing economic, social and cultural relationships of South Coast communities with the ocean. The result was a Blue Futures ‘Story map’ which details the diverse ways in which businesses, community groups and individuals engage with the ocean in our region.

When ‘taking stock’ of a region’s blue economy potential, the story map design ensured that no one social, environmental or economic angle was prioritized over another. Instead, space became the organizing principle, enabling users to scroll around the map to learn about what was important to the blue economy around them. In practice, this meant that employment statistics, historic coastal artworks and ocean governance examples appeared alongside clean ocean tech startups and established marine industries. The map brings these data into conversation with each other in the mind of the viewer, purely by their spatial proximity. This is an important first step in raising the profile of cultural and social data for developing blue economy solutions, which are often overlooked in favour of quantifiable statistics.

The University of Wollongong (UOW) Blue Economy projects recognized that building a community based approach requires an investment in relationships. This means that we expended considerable resources in building networks, fostering relationships and giving those relationships time to mature and evolve. This occurred internally, as we got to know the different disciplinary areas that different team members represented within the project. It also involved building collaborations with external partners over time. The most significant demonstration of this the growing role of Aboriginal partners in the research. Aboriginal partners and co-investigators had input into the early stages of the project and over time this relationship grew and evolved to the point that today our partners, the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council, are co-leaders in the project and are co-developing future collaborations with UOW.

One of the major learnings from the evolution of the University of Wollongong's (UOW) Blue Economy work is the need to be open to alternative ways of seeing the world. Our partnership with the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council and the influence of our Aboriginal co-investigators have led to a significant focus on decolonising our research, and methods for decolonising environmental decision making. This has largely involved a series of workshops with team member and Traditional Knowledge Holder Jade Kennedy, who pioneered the innovative Jindaola program within UOW. The Jindaola program is designed to reconcile and build relationships across different knowledge systems.