Hold out for health and happiness

While the Blue Economy approach starts with a clear focus on the basic needs of humans and Nature, it maintains clarity about the ultimate goal, which is to have a healthy and happy society. This is achieved by designing portfolios of projects in communities where money circulates locally, and strong social cohesion and cooperation develops as a result. Such an approach is transformational, as has been shown in the case of Las Gaviotas in Colombia as well as at the Songhai Centre in Benin. These two case studies have shown that even under the most adverse initial conditions, it is possible to create jobs, provide products and services, and even compete on price and performance against the global players, while striving towards health and happiness for the community.

The key is to have clarity from the beginning that, rather than continuing with past development models, a Blue Economy approach be adopted that seeks to chart a pathway towards the future, where we cannot pretend to know the outcome with certainty, nor have guaranteed results. Here we rely on creating a system with autopoiesis: meaning that the system has the ability to self-regulate, to adapt to disturbances, and to thrive within clear boundaries. Hence The Blue Economy approach searches for a healthy balance between the creation of value and the strengthening of community with local resources, and appropriate integration into national, regional and even global economies. The goal is not to create local economies that are economically self-sufficient, nor do we want to develop local economies that are wholly dependent on serving international markets, the goal is to create a balance among the options available, one that serves the local community and economy.

For instance, in Las Gaviotas the project sells colophon, the processed resin from pine trees, to the local paint industry, outcompeting Chinese and Venezuelan imports. It also sells excess naturally filtered water on the national market, working with restaurant chains like WOK in Bogota, that are keen on offering an alternative, one that is local and of high quality. These water sales, minute in global terms, compete locally with giants like Coca Cola and Nestlé, but unlike sourcing water from the international market the local offering generates welcome additional local cash flow that permits Gaviotas to maintain drinking water as a Commons in the local community where the water is captured. On top of that, the turpentine from the pine tree resin is purified and transformed into a fuel that operates both diesel and gasoline engines, eliminating the need for the import of petroleum from outside the region. Apart from this, the planting of oil palms in-between the pine trees and the emerging local biodiverse forest, and processed in a local plant, offers the region its own cooking oil. These two substitutions of imports at lower cost, which also generate income through wages, substantially increase the cash available in the local economy, which circulates faster and thus contributes to the creation of more purchasing power, which builds up local wealth and social capital.

The Songhai Centre operates along the same principles. Local fruit, vegetables, fish and meat set the stage for a productive farm in a peri-urban region of Porto Novo, the capital city of Benin. However, it is not only food that is locally produced: all equipment is maintained on site, and missing parts are not ordered with waiting times that would silence engines for months on end, but are rather manufactured locally, even if this requires the maintenance of a foundry and a metal workshop. The quail eggs produced, with birds fed predominantly on maggots farmed with offal from the slaughterhouse on site, are of high quality and much desired in France, enabling the Songhai Centre to regularly export its excess at prices that would never be viable on the local market. This offers an extra stimulus to business operations and permits the building up of social capital at an accelerated pace, providing the healthy and happy environment we all seek. The Blue Economy approach is not against globalisation, but rather in favour of a much better version of it.