Webinar: Building a blue economy

The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is putting renewed pressure on Aotearoa New Zealand's natural resource economies to deliver jobs and growth. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted that we need to build economies that are more resilient, sustainable, and focused on delivering livelihoods to communities.

With global challenges such as climate change and environmental degradation as pressing as ever, never have we needed to ‘do’ economy with such urgency. Aotearoa New Zealand must find new ways to think about how we use our marine resources.

This webinar will explore how Aotearoa New Zealand can build a blue economy. Nick Lewis (University of Auckland) will discuss the Challenge's definition of a blue economy, why we need to rethink the way we measure and manage economic activities in our oceans, and how we might go about doing economy differently.

He will introduce examples of New Zealand-based initiatives and activities that are beginning to show us a new way of approaching the challenge of a blue economy and will introduce a suite of research projects that explore new approaches.

The findings come from our Creating value from a blue economy project, which has produced relevant lessons as we plan a post-COVID-19 blue economy.

We welcome questions and comments in advance. If you have anything specific you would like covered, please email [email protected] 

About the speaker

Nick Lewis is an economic geographer in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland. His area of interest is the way that economies are made from an interplay of investment processes, policy and institutions, and socio-technical practices in management, production, distribution and consumption. His research focuses attention on the value creating possibilities of innovative concepts and methodologies for transforming the way we understand and perform economy as a collective social process.