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Recognizing the global challenges faced by marine ecosystems and the people that depend on them, there is a growing worldwide uptake of the "Blue Economy" approach for establishing equitable and sustainable ocean industries. Research has shown that the capacity to achieve these Blue Economies is largely shaped by enabling governance conditions related to social and economic equity, more so than available natural resources. Yet there is often a very wide variation across such enabling conditions even within nations and subregions of the world. This must be addressed to build the foundations necessary for regional development and cooperation in shared ocean systems, but will require much beyond investments in scientific knowledge, technology, or infrastructure. Indeed, in most developing (and some developed) regions of the world, enabling conditions for and establishing a Blue Economy will require confronting and redressing colonial and postcolonial histories of systematic underdevelopment. Accordingly, we conduct a regional, historical comparative analysis to assess how country differences in colonial and post-colonial development processes correspond with varying levels of Blue Economy capacity. We focus on the Caribbean given its deep reliance on ocean systems, the wide variability in current enabling conditions for a Blue Economy, and its long history of colonial exploitation. Our structural analysis emphasizes how the historical forces of colonial and neocolonial development serve as long-standing obstacles to achieving high Blue Economy capacity in the region. We reason that these findings provide further justification for reparation programs, which possess relevance for ocean sustainability and development across the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-political issues are important in environmental policy outcomes but are often overlooked in conservation planning. We analyze the effects of historical social, political, and ecological contexts on conservation policy outcomes as applied to the Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve. A rushed implementation, perhaps necessary for the protection of endangered totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) and vaquita (Phocoena sinus), occurred with little community consultation, resulting in enduring disgruntlement among stakeholders that undermined its effectiveness. Overfishing and habitat degradation continue both inside and outside the reserve, and totoaba and vaquita remain Critically Endangered, with the latter's population estimated at approximately 90 individuals. Marine reserves can be useful, but when top-down enforcement is unfeasible, effective environmental policy requires full recognition and integration of political history and social structures and needs, and open discussion on trade-offs when win-win situations are not possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]