APPLYING THE SDGS IN A FRAMEWORK TO ASSESS BLUE ECONOMY CAPACITY OF INDUSTRY OPERATORS IN CANADA

Abstract

Canada has committed to growing a blue economy grounded in sustainability but has not yet established a sustainability standard that industry operations must meet to be included in the blue economy. For the blue economy to be an effective, sustainable alternative to the regular ocean economy, an assessment framework that facilitates benchmarking and blue economy performance comparisons for ocean industry is needed to reduce the risk of bluewashing. This research uses the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a theoretical backdrop to generate industry blue economy aims and subsequent mechanisms that can assess a company’s blue economy capacity i.e., their contribution to a socially equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable blue economy. Ground-truthing methods corroborated that this framework is a needed tool for companies to improve their blue economy capacity and for regulators to make informed decisions on the development of Canada’s blue economy.