Who is the Blue Justice group?
Blue Justice will produce original, solution-oriented research based on the synthesis of multiple existing, and newly assembled, global datasets on MPA social and ecological conditions. Specifically, Blue Justice will examine the relationships between MPA governance and social-ecological outcomes, generating novel insights on the conditions that promote equity and climate resilience in vulnerable coastal groups (including women and Indigenous groups), and produce the first global evidence-base on innovative pathways towards greater equity and resilience in marine conservation. Principle investigators include Joachim Claudet – CNRS (France); David Gill – Duke University (USA); Jessica Blythe – Brock University (Canada).
What is Blue Justice?
The term “blue justice” was coined in 2018 during the 3rd World Small-Scale Fisheries Congress. Since then, academic engagement with the concept has grown rapidly. A new article published in Cambridge Prisms Coastal Futures on January 23rd, 2023 reviews 5 years of blue justice scholarship and synthesizes some of the key perspectives, developments, and gaps, connecting this literature to wider relevant debates. This work was completed by the interdisciplinary research group Blue Justice, funded by the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research (FRB) within its Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (CESAB).
Triple Exposure
Coastal communities are on the frontline of three important and accelerating global change processes: climate change, “blue economy” development, and the rapid expansion of area-based conservation initiatives – a phenomena recently coined as ‘triple exposure’. While these change processes and the approaches used to address them (e.g., climate adaptation projects) can support sustainability and well-being in some cases, in others these external processes can converge to amplify vulnerabilities and inequalities. Moreover, pre-existing environmental or political social injustices may increase the vulnerability of people to change processes, and may decrease their capacity to adapt to, or benefit from, interactive impacts of ‘triple exposure’. This topic is described in an article published in One Earth on February 17th 2023, by the interdisciplinary research group Blue Justice, funded by the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research (FRB) within its Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (CESAB).
Read the press release
Recent Publications
Gill, D.A., Blythe, J., Bennett, N., Evans, L., Brown, K., Turner, R.A., Baggio, J.A., Baker, D., Ban, N.C., Brun, V., Claudet, J., Darling, E., Franco, A.D., Epstein, G., Gray, N.J., Gurney, G.G., Horan, R.P., 2023. Triple exposure: Reducing negative impacts of climate change, blue growth, and conservation on coastal communities. One Earth
Blythe J.L., Gill D.A., Claudet J., Bennett N.J., Gurney G.G., Baggio J.A., et al. 2023. Blue justice: a review of emerging scholarship and resistance movements. Cambridge Prisms Coastal futures. Jan 26;1–36.
Read more about Blue Justice on the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research (FRB) website.
