A Comparative Assessment of National Approaches to Defining the "Ocean Economy"

The OECD Symposium The meeting in Paris was the third in a series that began in 2015 with a symposium sponsored by the Center for the Blue Economy and followed by a symposium sponsored by the National Marine Data & Information Service of the China State Ocean Administration. [...] Another examination of the ocean economy issues of islands is contained in a report from the World Bank on the nations of the Caribbean. [...] On the other hand, the three broad categories of government activity make it very difficult to provide any detail about the government’s role in the ocean economy beyond defense and “other.” Providing additional detail on the different ways in which the government participates in the ocean economy will require additional work, particularly at the state and local level. [...] The estimation of the ocean share of the federal government is relatively straightforward because most of the relevant data describing the ocean-related activities are already collected in the Federal Ocean and Coastal Activities Report to Congress (FOCAR). [...] The total estimated GDP in the State & Local Sector in the OESA is higher than the calculated partial would indicate (see Appendix 4), because the vast bulk of the estimate in the OESA for State and Local Government is derived from the interactions in the input/output table used to generate the estimates.