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Cleaning garbage on the beach in Mumbai, India, 31 March 2026 (Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A draft policy sets ecological limits for ocean growth, but ports, farms and mines in India are already testing them.
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India’s blue economy growth is outpacing its safeguardsIndia’s blue economy growth is outpacing its safeguards
The Blue Economy (Opens in new window) was meant to change the conversation about ocean development. Emerging from principles embedded in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and gaining prominence at the 2012 Rio+20 summit (Opens in new window), the concept (Opens in new window) envisioned healthy marine ecosystems alongside prosperous and equitable ocean economies.
Yet it has since splintered into what some analysts call “shades of blue (Opens in new window)”: competing approaches to ocean development ranging from conservation-centred to growth-first models.
In practice, governments (Opens in new window) have often adopted the language of the Blue Economy while continuing to prioritise production and economic growth. The real question is therefore not what the Blue Economy promises, but what it requires: whether economic activity can remain within ecological limits while delivering prosperity and equity.
India is an intriguing case study. With one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing (Opens in new window) economies, over 11,000 kilometres (Opens in new window) of coastline and ambitions (Opens in new window) to lead the Indian Ocean, India is a global test case for whether blue economic growth can be matched by real ecological safeguards.
India’s draft National Policy on Blue Economy (Opens in new window) seeks to harness ocean resource opportunities while protecting marine ecosystems and supporting coastal communities. The challenge is whether these objectives can be reconciled by making ocean-based production more efficient, or whether sustainability requires limiting extraction itself.
India does not need to choose between a productive ocean and a healthy one.
The distinction is not simply academic. Women-led seaweed farming in Odisha (Opens in new window) generates livelihoods with little pressure on marine ecosystems, creating value for themselves and their communities without extracting a single wild fish. At the other end of the spectrum, commercial aquaculture is often celebrated as a sustainable blue industry because it can reduce fishing pressure on wild stocks and improve aquatic food production efficiency.
Yet Australian experience with Tasmania’s salmon industry illustrates the limits of that framing: alongside concerns (Opens in new window) over nutrient and waste impacts, fish mortality, water quality and antibiotic use, farms in Tasmania have also faced controversy over interactions with seals, including almost 1,800 underwater explosives (Opens in new window) used to deter them in early 2026 alone.
That tension is also visible in current debates (Opens in new window) over deep-sea mining. India holds three exploration contracts with the International Seabed Authority (Opens in new window) for polymetallic nodules and sulphides, while the rules governing commercial exploitation remain under negotiation. During the ISA Council’s 31st session in 2026, chaired by India’s Permanent Representative to the ISA, Mayank Joshi, negotiations on the long-delayed “Mining Code” continued without a final agreement. As both a potential beneficiary of deep-sea mining and a participant in shaping its rules, India faces a central question for its Blue Economy policy: how far should resource extraction proceed when its ecological consequences remain uncertain?
Restoration work to protect seagrass meadows around Kariyachalli Island, off the coast of Thoothukudi in India's Tamil Nadu state (R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty Images)
India’s draft policy recognises the importance of sustainable development through commitments to marine spatial planning, natural resource accounting and coastal livelihoods. The problem is not a lack of sustainability language in policy, but that the institutions built to deliver growth have outpaced those designed to restrain it. Sagarmala and Maritime India Vision 2030 aim to add more than 700 million tonnes of port capacity (Opens in new window) by 2030, while the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 extends that ambition to mid-century. Ennore Creek, north of Chennai, illustrates the risk. Oil spills in 2017 (Opens in new window) and 2023 (Opens in new window), dredging, and port expansion have accumulated over time, with projects assessed individually and no single institution accountable for their combined impact.
The same challenge extends beyond India’s coastline. MAHASAGAR (Opens in new window), the maritime policy Delhi launched in 2025 as the “Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions”, positions India as a security and growth partner in the Indian Ocean. However, India’s maritime ambitions also depend on how it manages resources and ecological pressures that cross national boundaries. The recurring disputes between Indian and Sri Lankan fishers in Palk Bay (Opens in new window)demonstrate how competition over marine resources can become a livelihood and diplomatic challenge. For India, sustainable blue growth therefore requires not only domestic safeguards, but also cooperation with neighbouring states over shared marine resources.
Three policy shifts could help close the gap between India’s blue economy rhetoric and practice. First, the final Blue Economy Policy should establish marine spatial planning as a mandatory planning stage for major marine development, with cumulative ecological impacts assessed before projects are approved. Second, India should measure what its waters retain, not just what they produce, by incorporating ecosystem and fisheries health into national environmental accounts. Third, India should use MAHASAGAR, BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) and IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association) to develop common regional standards for managing transboundary fisheries, marine spatial planning and sustainable blue finance, building on initiatives such as the BOBLME (Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem (Opens in new window)) program.
India is far from alone: governments worldwide often label ocean growth “sustainable” without enforcing meaningful ecological limits – a practice known as “bluewashing (Opens in new window)”. India does not need to choose between a productive ocean and a healthy one. But it does need to judge successful blue growth by what the ocean is allowed to retain, not simply by what it produces. As its draft Blue Economy Policy remains unfinished, there is still time to embed stronger ecological safeguards into how maritime development is planned and assessed. If India gets that balance right, it could help demonstrate what a genuinely sustainable Blue Economy can mean in practice.
About the author
Kripa Anand
Ms Kripa Anand is a Research Associate at the National Maritime Foundation in New Delhi, a 2026 Australia Awards Fellow and a postgraduate in International Relations from Australian National University.
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