Research

INTRODUCTION

In the midst of the “decade for ocean science,” more scholars are attempting to maintain Blue Economy framing to focus more on the ocean’s social dimensions, particularly, as they relate to concerns of fair, just, and equitable development outcomes within and across nations (Bennett et al. 2019, Cisneros-Montemayor 2019, Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2021). These calls exist within a broader context of sustainability theorizing, whereby major international organizations have advanced calls for equitable, sustainable development for decades. Yet, as Ota et al. (2022) argue, the “logic models” that underlie sustainable development theories typically emphasize social equity as a back-end outcome of programs that prioritize economic growth and/or environmental protection. This tendency to center other concerns likely accounts for the “failure to create an equitable planet” (Ota et al. 2022) in the decades following the Brundtland Commission (Robinson 2004). In turn, we build off of recent literature and practice defining a Blue Economy as the establishment of ocean sectors, whether existing or emerging, that are centered on social equity yet simultaneously aiming for ecological sustainability and economic viability (Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2021).

The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) at the United Nations originally conceptualized the Blue Economy as the promotion of economically viable, environmentally sound, culturally appropriate, and socially equitable ocean development (Bennett et al. 2019; Österblom et al. 2020). (Though the SIDS are an official UN category, here we instead use the phrase “Large Ocean States,” which emphasizes the socio-cultural and economic importance of the ocean for many territories without arguably diminutive phrasing that reifies developmental paradigms [Teaiwa 2020, Hume et al. 2021]). Extant literature and the United Nations consider the Blue Economy a transformational movement to reimagine ocean development and governance (Blythe et al. 2018). Yet, a great deal of Blue Economy planning and discourse still strongly emphasize a familiar “good business” frame that comes with calls for growth-based development, technological innovation, and the promotion of natural capital (Silver et al. 2015, Voyer et al. 2018, Ota et al. 2022). For example, in the U.S., NOAA’s conception of the Blue Economy involves “leveraging of public-private partnerships,” along with STEM education and the harnessing of emergent technologies (NOAA 2021). Both Canada and the U.S. cite job creation and GDP returns from ocean sector development as justifications for further Blue Economy planning (DFO 2021, NOAA 2021).

Blue Economy reports from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America are more likely to emphasize developmental inequalities, sustained socioeconomic troubles, and environmental concerns. For example, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (2016) acknowledges the unequal drain of capital that characterizes contemporary African economic development where, in short, Africa gives more in wealth to the world than it receives in exchange. However, such critical reflection is not uniform and there remains a presence of “resource maximizing” rhetoric or conceptualization of the ocean as a kind of economic frontier across African contexts (Carver 2019, Schutter et al. 2021). In Latin America and the Caribbean, development organizations specifically recognize the importance of marine ecological protection to secure the economic, social, and cultural sustainability of vulnerable communities (Patil et al. 2016, Tambutti and Gómez 2020). Again, we also stress that such critical reflection is not uniform or dominant in these regions. Currently, the United Nations’ “Unleashing the Blue Economy of the Caribbean” prioritizes economic growth, improved livelihoods, and job generation in its efforts to supply participating states with investment loans and grants for projects that promote linkages between tourism and fisheries (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2022). However, as we describe, the Caribbean has long been integral and intertwined with the development of the capitalist world system. Developmental troubles thus likely stem from deeper, structural inequalities that speak to the uneven and exploitative nature of this system.

With this study we seek to interrogate this structure by assessing how dynamics of colonialism and neocolonialism shape long-term consequences that may account for national-level capacity to develop an equitable Blue Economy. Our analysis accomplishes this task by using historical comparative methods that account for socio-structural differences in the developmental histories of Caribbean territories. Accounting for history and social structure is important, among other things, to avoid policy and management strategies that may themselves ignore contextual pitfalls, be counterproductive, and/or further increase inequities (Lau et al 2021, Singh et al. 2021, Voyer et al. 2021). Indeed, developmental literature concerning sustainability in the context of natural capital is often critiqued for its tendency to propose “science-based,” or overly abstracted economistic solutions without a discussion of the socio-structural forces that underlie and promote unjust outcomes like poverty and inequality over time (Brissett 2018, Perry 2021a, Buller 2022).

SCOPE AND CONTEXT

An inequitable planet is not a sustainable one, in terrestrial nor marine systems. It is thus necessary to use and analyze conceptions of the Blue Economy that center the importance of more socially embedded considerations. Socially embedded considerations contextualize a society beyond its capacity to stimulate economic growth or protect natural capital. To forward this objective in this manuscript, this study builds on Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2021’s study of national level Blue Economy capacity scores. Cisneros-Montemayor et al. (2021) utilized a scoring method centered around what they call “enabling conditions,” that is, the conditions necessary to ensure that the outcomes from a Blue Economy are indeed equitable, sustainable, and viable, not simply the capacity to exploit available environments for growth. Thus, our present study utilizes Cisneros-Montemayor et al.’s (2021) general conceptualization of a Blue Economy, i.e., where socially equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable ocean sectors can thrive. Enabling condition scoring allows for socioeconomic factors to “count” equally alongside biophysical resources, which reflects demand for more holistic approaches to sustainability. These enabling conditions are discussed in depth in the Methods section but include indicators that can be commonly understood as pertaining to governance and the delivery of human rights and basic services, as well as infrastructure and other physical and economic development needs.

Here, we assert that this aim accords with the ostensible goals of sustainable development going back to the Brundtland Commission: that equity and justice matter, and indeed are essential, for sustainability. However, as scholars of equity and the Blue Economy now argue, sidelining equity and failing to consider the deep, historical foundations of global inequality serve as a hindrance to realizing many of the admirable goals of sustainability discourse (Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2019, Allison et al. 2020, Österblom et al. 2020). Building off Cisneros-Montemayor et al. (2021), this study provides a historically engaged, region-specific analysis of the Blue Economy’s underlying enabling conditions to highlight the political economic contexts, including colonialism and neocolonialism, that structure contemporary differences in Blue Economy Capacity. Thus, we hope that this study continues to steer toward more holistic, social-ecologically mindful initiatives.

Global analyses can highlight key conditions that enable or hinder current Blue Economy capacity, but to provide more meaningful assessments of underlying conditions for particular regions it is necessary to engage with area-specific political economic theory and research that identifies structural obstacles to sustainable, just development. Here, we focus on the Caribbean region to extend Blue Economy research and concepts, specifically, how they may be shaped by histories of colonialism, and how such histories may shape broad variations in the enabling conditions that largely determine Blue Economy capacity. To accomplish this aim, we apply qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to ascertain how/if major, historical developmental differences correspond with varying levels of enabling conditions for Caribbean countries and territories. In relying on critical political economic scholarship of the Caribbean, we developed QCA models that assess the extent to which historical conditions determined as especially relevant for long-term development outcomes in the Caribbean correspond with Cisneros-Montemayor et al.’s (2021) Blue Economy enabling conditions for the region. Today, the Caribbean contains a great deal of variation in Blue Economy capacity, more than all other world regions (Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2021). Moreover, there exists increasing momentum to classify Caribbean territories as Large Ocean States because of the ocean’s importance for national sovereignty, economic development, climate change vulnerability, cultural heritage, and other key factors (Hume et al. 2021).

Here, we acknowledge the limits of this methodological approach, which cannot ascertain how historically important conditions played out in ethnographic or narrative detail within specific countries or within communities of a country. Data is also somewhat limited to broader snapshots of historical trends, rather than detailed accounts of unfolding processes that a more targeted, small-N (1–4 cases) historical comparative study could provide. However, our analysis can point toward important historical trends that are associated with obstacles to an equitable, just, and viable Blue Economy for territories in this region. Generally, we found that territories that avoided structural adjustment and plantation development fare better than territories that did not. Further, we found that early entrance into a “post-colonial” world, which we argue was/is designed to marginalize post-colonial nations, corresponds with lower Blue Economy enabling conditions. These results are specific to the Caribbean and are explored in the context of the region, and in light of possible broader implications.

After discussing the main features of these findings, we provide some concluding implications for contemporary discussions on development and sustainability in the Blue Economy. For example, we argue that the study’s findings provide some caution to increasingly common assumptions that sustainability can be achieved via innovative, debt-based financing mechanisms. As others have argued (Buller 2022), such programs may reproduce already existent, problematic debt-relations and therefore hinder the positive growth of enabling conditions necessary for building Blue Economy capacity. We also argue that formal decolonization does not eradicate the polarizing, inequitable structure of the global economy. Thus, sustainability scholars, especially those concerned with equity, should advocate reparative programs that recognize and redress the lasting effects of historical injustices.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES TO CARIBBEAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

Overview of sustainable development and dependency theories

Here we review and identify primary historical forces that have been argued to influence development indicators in deleterious fashion over time within the Caribbean. As discussed at length, these are the enforcement of a plantation economy, sovereignty contradictions, and debt crises. These key concepts are operationalized and used in our historical comparative analysis, but it is important to first delve into their background and past inquiries to explain and justify the use of these specific concepts. Following from this, we posit that countries in the region that score higher on Blue Economy enabling condition scores likely avoided these forces to a greater extent than those that score lower, and vice versa.

Theoretical approaches to sustainable development, or what Ota et al. (2022) refer to as logic models, often emphasize neoliberal and ecomodernist approaches that prioritize aggregate economic growth (neoliberal) or economic growth in conjunction with environmental considerations and technological innovations (ecomodernist). The latter approach also emphasizes industrial freedom (i.e., limited regulation) as a way to encourage environmentally friendly innovation (Ota et al. 2022). These logic models and their influence are evident in studies of Blue Economy practitioners’ discourse, which predominantly emphasize good business frames and natural capital, or the commodification of marine ecosystem services (Silver et al. 2015, Voyer et al. 2018). We reason that these approaches generally conceive of the “sustainable development” in such a way that risks reifying the historically specific social context of a capitalist political economic structure. This reasoning also borrows from heterodox critics of mainstream sustainable development discourse, who stress that sustainable development (including much Blue Economy discourse) can be conceived as an effort to maintain profit accumulation in an era rife with global environmental problems as well as the decline of commodity frontiers and colonial era “markets on tap” (Patnaik and Patnaik 2021; Mallin and Barbesgaard 2020; Brent et al. 2018; Longo et al. 2016).

From this perspective, it is useful to apply theoretical frameworks that critically assess the historical conditions of world historical development under capitalism, and what such a process may (or may not) mean for considerations of a just Blue Economy. Doing so will, we reason, allows us to avoid simplifications that a rising tide will lift all boats, or that incorporation into the global economy will follow certain prescribed developmental paths for all nations (Rostow 1990). Indeed, the above-mentioned logic models commonly applied to Blue Economy discourse rest on assumptions that national development follows generalizable stages, whereby economic growth leads to the development of a more ecologically aware civil society, state apparatuses, and generally “better” institutions for managing development (Ota et al. 2022). Such approaches to development can lead to troubling conclusions that ultimately place blame for issues like persistent poverty on the doorstep of Caribbean nations, for their supposed failure to successfully integrate into the broader global marketplace (Perry 2020). In contrast, we argue, analyses of national development must critically consider structural dynamics that inhibit just development within countries, territories, and the “post-colonial” world, generally. Accordingly, our analysis borrows from concepts in dependency theory, a critical approach to making sense of the uneven incorporation of the colonized world into the broader structure of the capitalist world system.

Dependency theory largely originated out of mid-20th century, historical and sociological accounts of Latin American political economy, particularly, why many countries in the region struggled to “catch up” to their former colonizers in terms of many indicators of national wealth and well-being. As Kvangraven (2021) notes, the core hypothesis of dependency theory maintains that global capitalism tends to be polarizing. Incorporation into the global economic system is thus structurally uneven, both in the organization of production and the accumulation of capital. Importantly, this hierarchical organization of production and accumulation constrains peripheral development and concentrates economic and political power within the Global North (i.e., the core or metropole) at the expense of equitable incorporation of post-colonial states (Fischer 2015). Thus, dependency theorists regard development in relational fashion, whereby the accumulation of wealth and power in some states or regions results from exploitation and suppression elsewhere across historical time and into the present day (Ajl 2021). To regard development relationally means that one must consider national level outcomes in the Caribbean in conversation with the workings of history and social structure (Perry 2020).

Such a relationship constrains national sovereignty in the post-colonial world and fosters dynamics through which the Global South, or the majority world, is dependent upon Global North institutions. Here, we note that the usage of the nation state or territory as the unit of analysis requires careful consideration in a study aimed at providing some broader insights of global processes, like the Blue Economy. However, as Lewis (2013:4) argues, national independence or territorial sovereignty for Caribbean states do not exist autonomously, in a space “independent of the dictates of global capital” and the political economic governing structures associated with neoliberal globalization. Put differently, national development does not exist in a vacuum but in a contested political economic landscape, structured hierarchically. Thus, questions of self-determination associated with national development are impossible to understand without considering the ways in which colonization impacted long-term development within the Caribbean, as well as how neocolonial objectives may have been advanced in post-colonial contexts (Lewis 2012). In advancing historical comparative studies, dependency theorists have long argued that colonization is associated with long-term consequences that maintain uneven flows of wealth and power across the modern world system (Frank 1967, Lall 1975).

In a post-colonial context, dependency theorists provide historical analyses that emphasize the re-solidification of hierarchy across countries and regions after reaching national independence. For instance, within the post-colonial Caribbean, Beckles (2021) stresses that Britain not only took no responsibility for centuries of colonial exploitation and slavery, but financially thwarted Caribbean independence efforts in order to maintain West Indian subservience to Global North political and economic interests. These efforts served to perpetuate power asymmetries and uneven flows of material wealth out of the region. However, we maintain that this historical context strengthens arguments to promote national sovereignty in the Caribbean and across the Global South. As Ajl (2021:158) argues, states are “necessary vehicles for popular interests,” and their capacity to develop in just, equitable, and viable fashion hinges on North-South alliances that promote political economic autonomy. Conversely, conditions associated with an uneven, dependent incorporation likely serve as obstacles to sustainable objectives associated with Blue Economy capacity.

Colonialism and the Blue Economy

The Caribbean is a collection of island states, often characterized as economically and ecologically vulnerable (Brissett 2018). Scholars also describe the Caribbean as a global leader in ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as arguably the world’s most globalized region, because of its long history as a center of colonialism, slavery, and forced migration, trade, and more recent migration (Klak 1998, Valerio-Holguin 2010). Today, the growing enthusiasm for the Caribbean Blue Economy suggests the ongoing geopolitical significance of the region. Patil et al. (2016) consider the Blue Economy essential for greater economic security of the Caribbean, arguing that marine resources constitute new sources of economic growth if natural capital is assessed, managed, and invested in wisely. Here, economic growth stemming from realization and valorization of natural capital serves as a mechanism to reduce poverty and improve equity. Intraregional Blue Economy plans emphasize the marine diversity of the Caribbean (Tambutti and Gómez 2020). With this newfound optimism for sustainable, equitable growth stimulated by ocean sector development in the region, it is essential to consider how the deeper, regional history critically shapes contemporary trajectories.

Although the entirety of the hemisphere was subjected to European colonization, European (and, later, U.S.) colonization efforts did not emphasize white settlement in the Caribbean. Instead, the Caribbean underwent a particularly brutal form of colonization that rapidly decimated Island Indigenous populations and subjected much of the region to slave-based, plantation economies. As such, the Caribbean received more enslaved Africans than any other region in the world, resulting in slave populations that reached 85–90% of total island populations (Morgan 2011). After slavery, colonial powers relied upon indentured labor from other colonial territories, as well as low paid domestic laborers, to keep the mercantilist relationship afloat. This history of colonial and imperial practice has led economic historians of the region to argue that “no such economy has ever been as intensively exploited as that of the Caribbean,” (Beckles 2021:15) and that, although economic exploitation was certainly a motive of colonization elsewhere, “the economic motive seems particularly stark,” in the Caribbean (Eltis 2003:105).

Common amongst mercantilist systems of expropriation, colonial powers expressed relatively little interest in assimilation or institutional development in this region and, as Palmié and Scarano (2011:5) explain, although concurrent European colonial ventures in other regions were “built upon and were in turn shaped by significant persistence in the political structures, economy, and culture of large Indigenous population bases,” no such dynamic existed in the Caribbean. Rather, Caribbean colonization established a highly exploitative, deleterious, total institution across much of the region: the plantation economy (Mintz 1996, Ayala 2011).

Although there exist shared and predominant patterns of development throughout the region, the extent to which certain developmental processes occurred varies across territories. Thus, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of such enabling condition variation, more empirical analyses and theory building that concerns region-specific colonial and neocolonial development is needed. The following section provides such consideration and develops a comparative typology to help account for contemporary intra-regional Blue Economy capacity variation in Caribbean nations. In brief, this typology will emphasize the importance of the plantation economy, the process of independence and nationalization, and the late 20th century neoliberal shift of many Caribbean governments. Although this framework is particular to the Caribbean, we argue that a very similar consideration of how colonial modes of extraction and neocolonialist processes shape capacities would be highly useful for any other post-colonial region.

The plantation economy

As Caribbean economic historian George Beckford (1972; 1999) explains, the colonization activities of European nations and the U.S. (i.e., the metropole or colonialist core) generally took three forms, or ideal types of colonization: settlement, conquest, or exploitation. The most prevalent form of colonization across the Caribbean was exploitation, under the logic and system of plantation production (Best and Levitt 2009). Importantly, the Caribbean plantation emerged out of a process of maritime capitalism, whereby the Atlantic was transformed into an efficient circulator of commodities, including slaves, and value (Campling and Colas 2021). It is thus no exaggeration to suggest that the Caribbean region has been incorporated across global circuits of capital for the last five centuries. This process was predicated on violence and subjugation, first experienced most brutally in the Indigenous encounters with Spanish conquerors, who rapidly decimated Native populations across small island territories. Subsequently, the Caribbean received more enslaved Africans than any region in the world, with slave populations reaching 85–90% of total island populations (Morgan 2011). Notably, the island and oceanic geography also served as a source of resistance for maroon communities (Robinson 1983).

The plantation colony existed as a subsidiary of the metropolitan nation or firm, organized to produce and export a staple commodity at prices determined by external actors (Best and Levitt 2009). The metropolitan firm or nation, i.e., the colonizer(s), controlled profits and capital investment. Backward and forward linkages occurred outside the colonized territory, leaving little room for value added capture or economic diversification within the territory (Beckford 1999). Thus, plantation economies lacked diverse, localized economic development as well as a national income.

Unlike other colonial types of the colonized world, which endured and resisted both conquest and settlement, Best and Levitt (2009) characterize the Caribbean as, predominantly, a colony of exploitation. The metropolitan nation supplied slave or indentured labor from non-metropole nations and provided little governance outside of the dispensation of land titles to lord proprietors, who formed unequal partnerships with joint-stock trading companies and metropolitan merchants (Moya Pons 2001). The plantation was the only economic sector that received investment or planning, and it operated as a total institution with a great deal of labor, technological innovation, and governance applied exclusively toward ensuring its continued functioning. Thus, plantation economies were characterized by a “chronic incapacity” to diversify, derived from a systemic “get rich quickly mentality,” where all economic surpluses of production were realized abroad, in the colonizing nation (Best and Levitt 2009:69). These relations greatly benefited the colonizing nations, who could balance trade deficits through the re-exportation of tropical commodities extracted via slave, indentured, or extremely low paid labor (Patnaik and Patnaik 2021). Moreover, Caribbean plantation agriculture sustained European, and U.S.-based, consumption of artificially cheap sugar, which became a favorite dietary supplement of these countries’ industrial working classes (Moya Pons 2001). Thus, financially and calorically, European and U.S. industrialization was fueled by plantation grown commodity crops.

Within the colony, the plantation economy’s price structure systematically undervalued production aimed at non-export-oriented activity. This under-valuing of domestic production tended to generate conditions whereby local employment and income remained perpetually low (Best and Levitt 2009). Beckford (1999) reasoned that this phenomenon stalled community, socioeconomic development. As such, the continued reliance on the plantation for a source of wage income throughout much of the 20th century promoted social unrest, conflict, and was an obstacle to the growth of community level governance and institutions (Beckford 1999). Ayala (1999) concurs, noting that, in the Spanish Caribbean, planters successfully prevented freed slaves from gaining access to land, which allowed Spain to maintain a plantation system in a post-slavery context.

Because of their labor intensity, the sugar plantation acted as a catalyst for the capture and importation of African slaves into the region during the early half of the 17th century (Beckles 2011, Boucher 2011). As Levitt noted, a large plantation could require thousands of slaves, making “Adam Smith’s pin factory look miniscule in terms of the division of labor” (Levitt, as cited in Fischer 2019:553). The plantation system did not die with emancipation, though, and metropolitan nations utilized new tactics of labor and economic coercion, often in imperialistic fashion, to maintain the exploitative plantation system well into the 20th century (Ayala 2011, Heuman 2011, Girvan 2012). Notably, critical environmental historians utilize the “plantationocene” concept as a useful framing for understanding the racialized dynamics of global environmental injustice. The plantation, Tsing (2015) reasons, emphasizes scalability and interchangeability that flattens ecological complexity and substitutes biological diversity for cleared lands, monocrops, and destruction of local ecologies in exchange for standardized commodities. Importantly, this framework adds to our understanding of global capitalism and its ecological relations by highlighting a systemic disregard for agrarian ecological metabolism at local scales (Haraway et al. 2016, Ajl 2021).

We therefore posit that nations and territories within the Caribbean that avoided the long-term establishment of a plantation economy will generally demonstrate better current enabling conditions related to Blue Economy capacity scores. This corresponds somewhat with other post-colonial development analyses that emphasize how extractivist, mercantilist economies, where the colonizing nation made no substantial attempt to develop institutions and infrastructures, tend to perform relatively poorly on various developmental indicators (Mahoney 2003, Lange et al. 2006). In addition, colonies where plantation-based economies thrived endured a double jeopardy, characterized by both genocidal violence and the establishment of devastating, exploitative institutional arrangements for centuries thereafter (Edwards 2017). The establishment of colonies of exploitation evidences broader patterns of dependency and world system incorporation, whereby development in the colonial and neocolonial world was severely limited and in service of capital accumulation in the Global North. As we will discuss in subsequent sections, refusal to comply with the broader structure’s developmental expectations (or to advance a decolonial politics) can come with punishment and sanction.

Neocolonialism in the 20th century

Structural political economists of the region reason that the dependent, uneven, and exploitative characteristics of colonialism were generally maintained in the Caribbean during and through de jure decolonization. In the post-World War II era, the region entered a period of broad decolonization, spurred by nationalistic movements aimed at achieving varying degrees of sovereignty. Like emancipation, this process was an uneven, non-homogenous process, full of contradictions and setbacks (Whitney 2011). In a region characterized by exploitative colonial incorporation, and in a greater world economy organized hierarchically, independence often came with punishment, sanction, and exclusion. Further, newly independent states had to contend with the growing regional, imperial power: the United States (further discussed below). Perhaps the most striking example is Haiti, whose emancipatory revolution spurred a punitive, French-imposed debt that took Haiti until 1947 (or nearly 150 years) to pay off, economic sanction, as well as a harsh, segregatory U.S. military occupation that lasted several decades during the 20th century (Dubois and Gaffield 2011, Girvan 2012, Alcenat 2017). However, compensation paid to former slave owners for “lost assets,” as well “apprenticeship” programs that maintained plantation relations in a post-emancipation context, were common across much of the region (Ayala 1999, Beckles 2021). Overall, the entrance into the globalizing economy was treacherous for independent, sovereign nations, as it often involved a commitment to financial dependence and neoliberal development. In cases where independence was achieved prior to region-wide decolonization after World War II, these nations were additionally vulnerable to emergent U.S. imperialism (Ayalla 1999, 2011, Hudson 2017).

Today, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations are among the most indebted in the world (Sealey-Huggins 2017). Although neoliberalism can encompass cultural, political, and economic factors, we emphasize here that the 1980s global debt crises had particularly serious implications in post and neo-colonial territories. Fueled by a massive influx of newly acquired OPEC capital, western banking institutions flooded Global South nations with low interest loans during the 1970s (Graeber 2011). The enchantment of this so-called “go-go” banking was short-lived, as subsequent economic stagnation and inflation in the Global North led to skyrocketing interest rates at the onset of the 1980s. In the Caribbean, many nations could not repay debts at such high interest and, as such, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed harsh fiscal constraints on national governments, a process known as structural adjustment, in the region (Thomas 1998). Today, scholars of the region characterize national debt as a defining problem suffered by Caribbean territories that impedes developmental progress, national autonomy, and reinforces colonial patterns of dependency (Perry 2020, Perry 2021a, Ram and Kaidou-Jeffrey 2023).

Indebtedness in the region compromised national sovereignty and exacerbated dependency across many Caribbean nations. As Edwards (2017:102) puts it:

The main development issues shifted from ‘how do we reconfigure our economy and society in order to minimise the negative effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism’ to ‘how do we adjust to the pressing demands of the global economy?’

Following the logic of dependency theory, public sector indebtedness further subordinated national interests to the interests of global capital. Because of domestic inability to repay foreign debt, many Caribbean territories have entered structural adjustment arrangements with the IMF in order to manage debt repayments. These IMF-organized, structural adjustment programs typically involved the extirpation of public funding for education, health care, food relief, and other public sector programs associated with the national social safety net (Graeber 2011). It is generally understood that such debt relations can have deleterious consequences related to social and well-being indicators, as well generate income deflation for the Global South working class (Harvey 2007, Patnaik and Patnaik 2021). For example, in a systematic meta-analysis of two decades of independent scholarly research and grey literature, Thomson et al. (2017) found that the implementation of structural adjustment programs corresponded with declining rates of maternal and child health. Further, debt and IMF structural adjustment programs are found to be associated with increased rates of deforestation and biodiversity loss (Shandra et al. 2010, 2011, 2016). Patnaik and Patnaik (2021) regard such programs as mechanisms underlying the growing hegemony of international finance capital, which serve to re-establish Global South income deflation in a post-colonial, neoliberal world order.

Synthesizing remarks on framework

Taken together, our theoretical framework can be summarized as follows. Generally, we suggest that long-standing historical context matters greatly for contemporary scores on various development indicators. Development is therefore not an objective or linear process, nor one that necessarily bends toward increasing equity or justice over time. Orthodox developmental paradigms can fail to account for these axioms of dependency theory, and instead reason that variation on development indicators stems from the fact that some regions and nations are a stage or two behind more developed, affluent, or modern nations in their trajectories. From this perspective, progress is somewhat linear and stimulated by economic mechanisms normative to a capitalist world economy (Rostow 1990). A great deal of Blue Economy discourse articulates this logic, as it reasons that economic growth and marine sector commodification will correspond with progress in still developing states.

Contrary to this perspective, we reason that the historical contexts, particularly concerning colonialism and neocolonialism, still matter for contemporary indicators and sustainability related concerns. Accordingly, we posit, such a lens can help us situate and understand the broader reasons that underlie the socio-structural context that shapes contemporary variations in Blue Economy enabling condition scores across the Caribbean. This requires that development and, thus, measures used to evaluate it, must be situated historically and relationally. If one fails to do this, a metric like Blue Economy capacity risks appearing as an evaluation of abstracted state capacity that reveals little about the broader political economic structure in which Blue Economy programs occur.

METHODS

In this methodology, we first define and provide an overview of enabling conditions for a Blue Economy in Caribbean territories. Second, we present the theoretical framework that explains the underpinnings and selection of the historical development and structural factors that might explain the current enabling conditions scores in each territory. This review is largely based on scholarship in political economy and economic history from the Caribbean. Third, we conduct a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to assess the association between these historical development and structural factors and contemporary scores for enabling conditions, and Blue Economy capacity, within Caribbean nations and territories. Our results thus highlight structural factors contributing to current enabling conditions, which can inform broader policies to address systemic changes required to achieve a Blue Economy. See Figure 1 for a visualization of our methodological framework.

As Figure 2 highlights, the enabling conditions scores used here have been developed and estimated for territories across the world, and the Caribbean was indeed identified as the world subregion with the highest degree of variation in Blue Economy capacity (mean = 63, +/- 9.7; Cisneros-Montemayor et al. 2021). These enabling conditions were informed by a large body of literature regarding the core components implied within a Blue Economy and comprise three overall themes. These themes and their indicators are: social equity (corruption, human rights, economic and group equity, gender equality; e.g., Finkbeiner et al. 2017, Teh et al. 2019, Allison et al. 2020, Österblom et al. 2020); environmental sustainability (biodiversity, habitat, water quality; e.g., Shen et al. 2011, Halpern et al. 2013, Laffoley et al. 2020), and economic viability (infrastructure, investment risk, national stability; e.g., Sekkat and Vegazones-Varoudakis 2007, UN Economic Commission for Africa 2014, Patil et al. 2018). Importantly, we stress that the implementation of Blue Economy strategies is still nascent and, thus, the capacity indicators represent a theoretical framework rather than an actual, evaluative score on Blue Economy success.

Although these indicators are consistently highlighted in the literature regarding the Blue Economy (including by the authors referenced here), their relative contribution to outcomes is very difficult to evaluate given that specific Blue Economy development is at a nascent stage (Caswell et al. 2020). Therefore, Cisneros-Montemayor et al. (2021) used a fuzzy logic model to standardize and combine these different types of themes and indicators into a single enabling conditions score (0–100) that evaluates not Blue Economy outcomes but capacity, i.e., the relative ease with which it could be achieved to meet stated equity, sustainability, and viability goals given current conditions. Although fuzzy logic methods are explicitly designed to incorporate uncertainty in input data (Cox 1999, Andriantiatsaholiniaina et al. 2004), a key limitation of the approach by Cisneros-Montemayor et al. (2021) is that quantitative data on enabling conditions indicators are almost always collected and reported at national scales, whereas these conditions almost certainly vary within nations. These data include, for example, the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (https://govindicators.org), the Fund For Peace’s Fragile States Index (https://fragilestatesindex.org/country-data/), or the Ocean Health Index’s suite of indicators associated with environmental sustainability (https://oceanhealthindex.org/). Therefore, such global results must be contrasted and complemented with methodological approaches that examine deeper histories and trends, which this study aims to address.

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA)

In this study, we rely upon techniques and approaches in QCA to assess how structural, political economic factors account for contemporary differences in Caribbean territories’ enabling condition scores. QCA is a method for assessing how combinations of conditions produce different or similar Blue Economy capacities, and it is particularly useful for building and testing theory on factors influencing social and economic change. Here, our cases are Caribbean territories, and our outcomes are current estimated levels of Blue Economy enabling conditions, defined as the capacity to establish ocean sectors that are socially equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable.

QCA is also a useful approach for studies that rely on within-case methods (i.e., historical narrative analysis) and cross case comparisons of medium to large size, usually around a minimum of 15 cases (Legewie 2013). QCA methods reveal patterns of associations across sets of cases that can provide evidence for the potential existence of historical causality (Schneider and Wagemann 2010). Using both fuzzy set analysis and Boolean algebra, QCA software (fsQCA) can empirically assess necessary and sufficient antecedent conditions for certain outcomes to occur (Ragin 1987, Ragin 2008).

The first steps of a QCA require the researcher(s) to gain adequate, working knowledge of the cases and outcome(s; Pappas and Woodside 2021). To reiterate, historians and political economic scholars of the Caribbean emphasize the plantation system, sovereignty contradictions, and debt crises as key socio-structural factors for understanding contemporary development across the region. As discussed in the context of a Blue Economy, these development and governance issues are reflected in existing estimates of enabling conditions and Blue Economy capacity scores, which represent the outcomes in the QCA.

Using fsQCA software and QCA methodology, we sought to empirically ascertain how historical, structural forces vary across enabling conditions scores across Caribbean territories. The next step involved the creation of a data matrix (Table 1), where columns indicate degrees of membership within a defined category (Kent 2008, unpublished manuscript, https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/cmist/archive-publications/working-papers/2008/2008-10-teaching-paper-fsqca.pdf). Our analysis includes crisp sets (0 or 1) marking full (1) or no (0) membership in a category, as well as fuzzy logic which, using a value between 0 and 1, indicate no, partial, or full membership in a set (Ragin 2000, Rihoux and Ragin 2009). Table 1 presents the set scores for potential causal factors analyzed in this study. These factors operationalize our main emphases concerning colonialism and dependency as described in the theoretical framework. QCA considers these conditions not as independent variables but, in contrast, as a configurational analysis whereby the presence or absence of (joint) conditions can produce an outcome (Fainshmidt et al. 2020). Thus, conditions can possess elective affinity with one another, and it is the researcher’s job to theoretically explain why such configurations may exist.

For the plantation system, we included three conditions for temporal coverage of plantation system presence across the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. For sovereignty contradictions, we included a column for contemporary sovereignty status (Sovereign) as well as a separate condition (Early Independence) that assesses if the territory reached independence prior to region-wide decolonization. For debt crises, we included a condition entitled Structural Adjustment, which measures agreements with the IMF. Higher levels of this condition would suggest not only debt but the inability to internally manage it. Although related to elements of the enabling condition score (e.g., investment risk or national stability), structural adjustment and sovereignty contradictions are conceptually distinct for several reasons. One, sovereignty contradictions are not an evaluation of contemporary national stability, but instead represent a proxy into how and when a territory achieved its degree of independence. Regarding structural adjustment, these programs (which unfolded over time) were ostensibly meant to alleviate and improve nations’ financial stability and investment potential via the restructuring of government programs and spending. They are thus not in themselves a measure of investment risk but, rather, a policy program with myriad implications.

In order to contrast territories’ records of structural adjustment, we compiled historical (1984–present) transaction records between Caribbean territories and the IMF. These records are publicly available through the IMF website, specifically their country profile pages. Plantation economic development was deduced through secondary historical data compilations on plantation production. We derived 18th and 19th century plantation output from Eltis (2003), who utilized multiple secondary sources to provide estimations for output volumes of key plantation commodities estimated at 1770 and 1850, averaged over a period of multiple years. For consistency, any territory listed and accounted for was counted as having a plantation system present in our analysis. Twentieth century plantation development was derived from Beckford’s (1972) list of plantation economies present in the Caribbean, which relied on land survey data from the International Labor Organization. Membership in the sovereignty category was given to territories that are not current protectorates of colonial powers. Finally, we placed a territory in the early independence category if the territory gained independent, sovereign status prior to mid-20th century, region wide de-colonization.

To compensate for limited historical data availability and to ensure replicability, we employed conservative scoring methods. In brief, for conditions that included historical rolling averages of production based on limited historical data (plantation), we utilized a crisp (binary) score. We also applied binary scores to conditions like current sovereignty status and whether the territory reached independence before post-World War II, official (i.e., legal and formal) decolonization. Scores on continuous metrics, specifically structural adjustment, could be grouped together more consistently and thus better translate to a fuzzy set score. The parameters and input data for the QCA is presented in Table 1.

Based on available input data, we utilized fsQCA to determine necessary conditions achieving (or not achieving) high enabling condition scores (i.e., higher or lower than the subregional average). We categorized a territory as a high enabling condition (HEC) territory if its enabling condition score exceeded the subregion average by a non-trivial margin. This approach groups Trinidad/Tobago in the low enabling condition (LEC) outcome group, as its enabling condition score exceeds the subregion average by < 0.1.^[1]

Consistent with prior literature and to ensure high standards for necessity, we interpreted conditions with at least a 0.65 level of coverage and consistency as “usually necessary” (Mahoney 2003). Consistency assesses the degree to which a condition appears, and the outcome is met, where 1 would equal perfect consistency (Ragin 2006). Coverage gauges how relevant variation in the condition matters for the outcome (Legewie 2013). Here, we stress that our analysis provides evidence for likely long-run causality, but confirmation of causality always requires more in-depth, within-case methods and small-N (roughly 1–5 cases) comparisons. In logical terms, condition X is “sufficient” if it co-occurs with outcome Y, but “necessary” if Y fails to occur without the presence of X (Legewie 2013). In fuzzy set terms, for sufficiency, the condition is a subset of the outcome; meaning, that across all cases the degree of membership in the condition(s) is consistently less than or equal to the degree of membership in the outcome; the inverse is true of necessity (Ragin 2000, Mahoney 2003, Legewie 2013). FsQCA provides consistency scores for relations within a set, and this indicator is analogous to a score of statistical significance of conditions for levels of enabling conditions (Mahoney 2003, Ragin 2006).

FsQCA also converts crisp and fuzzy sets into a truth table to highlight combinations of conditions that consistently correspond with the outcome (Legewie 2013). Using an algorithm based in Boolean (binary) algebra, fsQCA logically reduces the truth table to simplified combinations from most complex, most parsimonious, and intermediate solutions, with the latter two easiest to interpret (Fiss 2011). Parsimonious solutions reduce the conditions based on their potential logical redundancy (Fiss 2011). Intermediate solutions include conditions that can be classified as “easy counterfactuals,” which allow redundant causal conditions to be added to a set of causal conditions (Fiss 2011). Based on these solutions one can distinguish between core and peripheral conditions, where core conditions appear in both the parsimonious and intermediate solutions, and peripheral conditions appear in only the intermediate solutions.

RESULTS

Table 2 reports necessary conditions determined using FSQCA software. For territories with high enabling condition scores (HECs), i.e., territories whose enabling condition score exceeded the subregion average, no conditions simultaneously reach a 0.65 level of coverage and consistency, suggesting there are no necessary, or usually necessary, conditions for this outcome. This is not uncommon in QCA, as it can be difficult to prove necessity. Thus, Table 2 reports findings for only LEC territories. We provide full results that include non-findings for necessary conditions in Appendix 1.

For the low enabling condition (LEC) outcome, or territories whose enabling condition score does not exceed the subregion average, the model emphasizes four usually necessary conditions: the presence of a plantation across each century (18th, 19th, 20th), as well as the presence of contemporary sovereignty. This finding suggests that, for the LEC outcome to occur, these antecedent conditions are generally present. Next, in Figure 3, we present the solutions, or combinations of conditions, that correspond with the LEC outcome.

Figure 3 presents the intermediate solutions and core conditions for the LEC outcome. Intermediate solutions include the most parsimonious solutions along with supplemental factors that, when combined, tend to correspond with the current Blue Economy enabling conditions and capacity scores. Core conditions are those that are present in parsimonious and intermediate solutions. Full reporting from the analysis on parsimonious and intermediate solutions is presented in supplementary files.

For LEC territories, there are four solutions given the model parameters. This indicates that conditions and their combinations can vary, somewhat, in the pathway to lower enabling condition scores. Solution 2 from Figure 3 was the most common solution across the four, meaning that this historical process was the most frequent sequence amongst LEC territories. Figure 3 reports that the presence of a 20th century plantation is the only core condition. Twentieth century plantation development presence possesses high coverage because the condition’s presence is perfectly sufficient in meeting the outcome; every time this condition appears, the LEC outcome is reached. The condition’s consistency is also high because it is a widely shared condition across LEC territories. These findings suggest that, for LEC territories, plantation development across temporal scales is relevant in accounting for lower enabling conditions. For territories that avoided plantation development across centuries, to at least some extent, this advantage appears nullified by early independence and structural adjustments in more contemporary times.

Figure 4 illustrates that there are two key solutions, or causal pathways, that tend to produce the HEC outcome. For solution 1, territories that avoided plantation development in the 19th and 20th centuries, are not currently sovereign, did not reach early independence, and avoided structural adjustment, all reach the HEC outcome. For solution 2, all territories that avoided plantation development across all centuries, did not gain early independence, and avoided structural adjustment also reach the HEC outcome. The figure also highlights the core conditions for the HEC outcome. When these conditions, or some combination of them, are present for a particular case, the HEC outcome is met. We thus interpret these core conditions as usually sufficient for producing the HEC outcome. Based on the findings, HEC territories are quite distinct from LEC territories in their historical trajectories. Relative to the LEC outcome, HEC category membership is more defined by the avoidance of both plantation development and imperialistic, neo-colonialist practices.

DISCUSSION

This study sought to understand how certain historical processes correspond with different levels of enabling conditions, deemed critical for achieving holistic, equitable marine sustainability, in Caribbean territories. In doing so, we constructed an analysis meant to test and compare the explanatory power of the plantation system, structural adjustments, and contradictions surrounding national sovereignty. This analysis allows us to test and build a theoretical framework capable of incorporating history and justice-oriented developmental concerns into contemporary conversations about marine sustainability.

Results indicate a good deal of accordance with the theoretical framework. The avoidance of the predominant, exploitative colonial institution across the subregion, the plantation economic system, matters. Territories within the HEC outcome more commonly avoided this condition, historically. Of the six HEC territories, four of them avoided the plantation system in both the 19th and 20th centuries. Two territories in the HEC category avoided the plantation system in all three centuries. For example, while the Bahamas did not avoid slavery or colonialism, it was characterized by infertile soil and considered a non-plantation colony (Saunders 2016). Similarly, the Virgin Islands were considered “agriculturally marginal” and thus not a site worth investing resources or people dedicated to large scale farming for a sustained period (O’Neal 1983). More targeted historical work could parse out how territory-specific histories and processes unfold over-time, to explore how plantation systems emerged and failed or were avoided and if these processes correspond with contemporary conditions. Such patterned, historical associations are not present for any territories whose enabling condition score was at or below the subregion average.

Furthermore, the avoidance of structural adjustment was a core condition for achieving the HEC outcome. The models also consider the presence of structural adjustment as a peripheral condition for solutions that correspond to the LEC outcome. Beyond the plantation and structural adjustment, conditions concerning sovereignty also strongly mattered within the models. First, contemporary sovereignty (the presence of) is a necessary condition for LEC. All territories within this outcome are sovereign. Conversely, many of the high scoring territories are not sovereign states. Further, no high scoring territories achieved early independence, or sovereignty prior to post-World War II decolonization across the subregion. These countries—Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic—not only are placed in the LEC capacity outcome, but also were the three lowest scoring territories in terms of enabling conditions. As we will explain, these findings associated with sovereignty and early independence speak to the histories and on-going conditions associated with colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism that can deleteriously affect national development.

Implications for the Blue Economy

Results indicate that Caribbean nations entered the world economy on structurally unequal footing, with lasting effects. Notably, scholars of the region and critics of neocolonialism have long made this argument; our study suggests that these arguments are also very relevant for present day considerations of a Blue Economy. Plantation style development appears to correspond with long-term, deleterious consequences. One of these consequences is an elective affinity for foreign debt crises, indicated by the presence of structural adjustment programs. This result should give advocates of sustainable development and the Blue Economy in the Caribbean some pause.

When directing their focus toward the Global South, sustainability discourses often emphasize the essential nature of innovative, private sector finance mechanisms. This shift corresponds with the rising tide of neoliberal governance norms, which reduce the role of the state and public sector in favor of private sector institutions chiefly concerned with profit maximization (Bracking and Leffel 2021). Consequently, the share of Official Development Aid (ODA) in the form of grants and concessional loans has substantially decreased over time, as debt-based finance for climate and other ecological initiatives has become the de facto approach to funding sustainable development in many post-colonial states (Banga 2019). The Caribbean is no exception, especially given its on-going struggles with debt.

Global North institutions and scholars are, increasingly, advocating that such innovative financing initiatives, such as blue bonds, debt-for-nature swaps, blended finance, insurance, FinTech, and other profit-based finance programs must be utilized to support the Caribbean Blue Economy (Ram and Kaidou-Jeffrey 2023). Within the region, the Organisation for Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) also reasons that, because of inadequate ODA as well as astronomical levels of national debt in Caribbean states (many countries’ debt to GDP exceeds 50%, and conditions have worsened during COVID-19), innovative finance techniques that harness private capital markets, governed by international investors, are essential for a Blue Economy (OECS 2020, Tambutti and Gómez 2020, Ram and Kaidou-Jeffrey 2023). These calls correspond with broader conceptual trends that emphasize the importance of profit-oriented finance capital to fuel sustainable development in the post-colonial world, much of which remains highly indebted with limited access to liquidity (Volz et al. 2020).

Given our analysis, we identify two critical concerns associated with this increasingly hegemonic approach to financing a Blue Economy in the Caribbean. One, these approaches contain no mechanism to acknowledge and make amends for the historical injustices imposed upon the Caribbean, which characterize its incorporation into the structure of the global economy over the last 400 years. Two, there is limited evidence to support the notion that such programs enable equitable, capacity boosting development. Focusing on our first concern, the importance of redress for historical injustice is evident given the findings, which suggest that early independence and sovereignty correspond to worse Blue Economy capacity. Below, we provide clarification on this finding.

The lowest scoring territories not only suffered centuries of plantation style development, but also entered the global economy as independent states at an earlier period than most other territories in the subregion. These countries—Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic—did not enter the world marketplace on truly sovereign, well-supported terms. Rather, Global North countries, notably the burgeoning imperial power at the time, the United States, brought economic exclusion in the form of sanction and capital flight, imperialistic and speculative U.S. finance, and brutal U.S. military occupation that re-imposed or intensified plantation style development in these states (Ayala 1999, Hudson 2017, Casimir 2020). Regarding Haiti, the territory with the lowest Blue Economy enabling conditions, critical historians reason that its struggles against colonialism and dependent development resulted in particularly harsh treatment from foreign powers aghast at the thought of an independent, former slave state (Gonzalez 2012, Alcenat 2017, Casimir 2020). Accordingly, these territories were exposed earlier to predatory, imperialistic practices that appear to correspond with worse long-term developmental outcomes.

Countries that emerged later were not immune, though, to imperialistic meddling of core nations. As Beckles (2021) demonstrates, former British colonies were also subjected to myriad tactics of de-development and post-colonial sabotage half a century later. At mid-century, British officials,

moved expeditiously to reject [the] argument that the British owed a debt to the West Indies, and, importantly argued that Britain had no legal and moral responsibility to contribute to West Indian economic development and modernization. (Beckles 2021:215).

After Britain thwarted attempts at creating a regional post-colonial, West Indies Federation, it then “adopted a penny-pinching position,” in dealing with its former colonial territories, “which had been the primary external source of its early wealth and economic development,” for generations (Beckles 2021:280). Economic imperialism and neocolonial interference were typically justified on highly racist grounds, which regarded Caribbean people as less advanced and less capable of self-determination (Hudson 2017, Beckles 2021).

In short, the post-colonial Caribbean has long been maligned militarily, financially, and politically since these nations’ inceptions. Thus, any development program that espouses inclusion and cooperation without justice-oriented redress that (A) provides material compensation for centuries of exploitation and (B) affords sovereign nations the right to national self-determination, risks reproducing dependency and mal-development, or what critical dependency theorists sometimes refer to as de-development (Ajl 2021). Sustainable development plans, including the Blue Economy, should recognize that the sovereign Caribbean has long been sabotaged to reproduce fundamental dynamics of coloniality that generate systemic de-development.

Aside from these historical concerns, there is also limited evidence that innovative finance mechanisms necessarily reduce social inequality, improve well-being, and ameliorate exacerbating forces that denigrate Blue Economy enabling conditions. Based on case study research in sub-Saharan Africa, there is conflicting evidence that debt-based investment can support clean energy projects at a generalizable scale without substantial public sector support and, in cases where such investments do occur, it may take decades for profits to trickle down to communities (Baker 2015, Klagge and Nweke-Eze 2020). In addition, within the Caribbean, innovative climate investment is typically risk averse and thus, so far at least, is substantially geared toward development strategies that could be classified as “mitigation” rather than “adaptation” (Atteridge et al. 2017). Scholars who chart climate finance flows to the social-ecologically vulnerable and geographically exposed Caribbean note that mitigation projects receive greater funding and financial investment flows than adaptation (Saunders 2016, Perry 2021b, Atteridge et al. 2022). Mitigation includes increasing interest in debt for nature swaps that offset global carbon emissions while limiting land and coastal development in Caribbean territories (Tambutti and Gómez 2020). As Perry reasons (2021b), putting a mitigatory onus for global climate change on historically low-carbon territories in desperate need of climate adaptation risks reproducing global environmental injustice on neocolonialist lines.

CONCLUSION

The structural framework and analysis applied here helps reveal the development trap faced by many Caribbean nations and territories. Because of the hierarchical, colonial structure of the global economy, aggressively resisting problematic institutions of colonialism does not ensure prosperity, and in fact may incur sanction. As such, truly sustainable development must afford nations the capacity to develop in ways that culturally, socially, and economically align with demands of Global South peoples; indeed, this was one of the promises of a Blue Economy at the time of its inception (Voyer et al. 2018, Cisneros-Montemayor 2019).

As scholars of the Blue Economy and sustainable development, we recognize that we are fundamentally unable to prescribe how a nation, territory, or communities in the Global South, or the Caribbean specifically, “should” develop. Rather, we hope that practitioners of the global Blue Economy, particularly those based in the Global North, will consider this study as further evidence that it is essential to carefully consider, and challenge, the assumptions embedded within ocean development discourse, particularly, how those assertions may reproduce structural obstacles to just, sustainable development.

Indeed, efforts to promote global sustainably depend on those in power, notably Global North nations and institutions, being held accountable to equitably redistribute political power and economic resources. In a structurally hierarchical political economic order, we cannot assume that all nations follow similar paths, or stages, of development. We reason that the neo-colonial structures that privilege uneven capital accumulation and limit Global South sovereignty must be challenged. Thus, advocacy for just sustainability should seek redress for historical injustice and, simultaneously, seek to dismantle present structures that reproduce cross-national inequality and uneven development.

However, at present, the prominent approach to fostering a Blue Economy in the Caribbean emphasizes private sector, innovative finance mechanisms as essential for sustainable development projects. It is unclear how modern, innovative finance mechanisms alter or challenge the dependent and unjust incorporation of Caribbean territories into the broader global economy; indeed, as critical historians of debt, race, and capitalism have documented, debt-based finance (which was promoted as innovative in its own time) has long been an important tool in producing, not challenging, such relations in the Caribbean (Hudson 2017, Zambrana 2021). Because of this inability to confront the hierarchical structure of incorporation, innovative finance mechanisms risk reproducing it, which some would argue is indeed the intent (what Perry 2021b refers to as the “new bond-age”). Critics of this approach reason that continued reliance on debt-based finance may amplify dependency on Global North capital, pose threats to Global South sovereignty, and restructure (rather than eliminate) long-term debt on undemocratic terms that do not center the will of Caribbean people (Perry 2019, TDR 2019, Buller 2022).

Thus, we advocate for more substantial challenges that can confront inequitable dependency and work to dismantle neo-colonial relations. Many are already articulating these demands. In regard to the climate crisis, Perry (2021b) argues,

Compensation and a broader reparatory justice framework are not currently on the international climate agenda to address climate crisis that inflicts disproportionate economic, ecological and social harms on racialized communities in the global South. Reparatory claims must be made visible through transnational organising, activism and dialogue that centre experiences and aspirations of dispossessed communities.

Such calls are increasingly relevant for issues pertaining to global ecological sustainability, and the CARICOM Reparations Commission (founded in 2013) has already issued a 10 Point Action Plan articulating how and why reparations for crimes against humanity should be paid by colonial powers to Caribbean states (CARICOM 2020). The plan contains calls for debt cancellation and monetary compensation, funding for health care, education, Indigenous people’s development programs, and many other socioeconomic and cultural demands. We stress that such programs can best be administered by Caribbean states and territories in a sovereign fashion whereby the people living in the Caribbean can more directly affect and evaluate implementation through political and social organization. In other words, we challenge the notion that Western, Global North states possess the historical legitimacy here to determine who is deserving of aid or how such funds must be used.

These sorts of calls are becoming more common in critical scholarship and across Global South organizations and movements (Ajl 2021). Our analysis provides further support for these calls for reparatory programs, and we hope that future empirical and theoretical analyses can continue to articulate the importance of recognizing and redressing deep historical injustices in the creation of a new, just Blue Economy.

__________

^[1] Analysis was conducted with Trinidad/Tobago in the high enabling condition category as well to ensure robustness of findings. Solutions remained the same in both approaches to categorization.

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