AUTHOR=Kwiatkowski Jakub M. , Zaucha Jacek 

TITLE=Measuring the blue economy in the EU: The Polish experience

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1129075

DOI=10.3389/fmars.2023.1129075

ISSN=2296-7745

ABSTRACT=It is generally agreed that the blue economy and blue growth play important roles in the global economy and, over the last years, have been widely discussed at both, national and international levels. Nevertheless, there is a lack of consensus on how to measure them, as the accounting methodologies differ between studies, implying divergent results. The following article summarises existing studies by comparing blue economy accounting methodologies and highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Based on the comparison, a new methodology is proposed, based primarily on micro- and country-specific local data, which has been applied to measure the size of the blue economy in Poland. Obtained results show slightly underestimated results of the size of the blue economy in existing analyses for Poland, despite similarities concerning general dynamics and sectoral structure over time. The study concludes, that a trade-off exists between using existing, one-fit-all methods, and country-specific methods, allowing for a more precise, tailored approach, makes at the expense of the accuracy of cross-country comparisons. Finally, the study highlights that as there is no unambiguous solution for the above trade-off, different methods should be used with regard to different policy and research tasks in line with their specificity.