The Promise of the Blue Revolution
Environmental sustainability is already very difficult to achieve with today’s 6.6 billion people and average economic output of $8,000 per person. By 2050 the earth could be home to more than nine billion people with an average output of $20,000 or more. Many environmentalists take it for granted that richer countries will have to cut their consumption sharply to stave off ecological disaster.
There is another approach. Global public policies and market institutions can promote new technologies that raise living standards yet reduce human impact on the environment. A crucial group of such technologies is aquaculture, the farming of marine animals, which can support growing human consumption of fish and other aquatic species while relieving intense pressures on ocean ecosystems. The rapid development of aquaculture in recent years has been likened to a “Blue Revolution” that matches the Green Revolution of higher grain yields from the 1950s onward.