The Ocean Economy to 2050

Reader’s guide

This reader’s guide describes the ocean economy, provides a definition of ocean economic activities and introduces how they are measured in this report. It also provides the list of countries combined in the different regional and income groupings and a glossary of technical terms.

What is the purpose of this report and who is it for?

The Ocean Economy to 2050 report is a new OECD resource to enhance understanding of the evolving ocean economy landscape. It presents unprecedented data on the ocean economy covering almost three decades (1995-2020) for more than a hundred countries and thirty-three ocean economic activities. In addition, it provides a comprehensive analysis of possible projected growth trajectories, challenges, and opportunities within the global ocean economy over the next 25 years.

Building on ten years of dedicated OECD ocean economy work (with the landmark 2016 report on "The Ocean Economy in 2030"), and highlighting important OECD wide ocean work, this report aims to offer insights into how ocean economic activities can contribute to prosperity, employment, and innovation, while ensuring the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of marine ecosystems. By examining emerging trends, technological advances, and policy developments, the report seeks to inform stakeholders about possible future paths of the ocean economy All at a time when ocean health deterioration, climate change acceleration and biodiversity loss are increasingly affecting countries around the world.

This report is intended for a diverse audience including policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and civil society organisations engaged in ocean-related activities.

The report is structured in six chapters:

• Chapter 1 provides an overview of the main findings from the publication and key recommendations for policymakers.

• Chapter 2 provides the general context-setting for the rest of the publication, with a brief review of major evolving ocean policy landscape and governance issues that are impacting the ocean economy.

• Chapter 3 delivers new OECD statistics and analysis on ocean economic activities and their evolution over recent decades.

• Chapter 4 identifies key factors of performance for the ocean economy. Based on these, it projects potential ocean economy growth to 2050 under the assumption that historical trends persist and establishes a theoretical baseline scenario used in the next chapters.

• Chapter 5 analyses how major shaping forces could affect potential ocean economy trajectories o as describes how the historical record is not necessarily a good indicator of future ocean economic growth.

• Chapter 6 explores further how combinations of several of these global shaping forces may affect specific areas of the ocean economy in the decades to come. It then outlines two future scenarios for the ocean economy differentiated by alternative approaches to the global energy transition.

Basic concepts used in measurements of the international ocean economy in the OECD Ocean Economy Monitor and featured in this report

Ever since the 2016 release of The Ocean Economy in 2030 (OECD, 2016_[2]), the OECD has described the ocean economy as an interrelated system of two pillars: economic activity and the marine ecosystem assets and services that they rely on. Interlinkages between ocean economic activity and the marine environment are therefore a founding concept in analysis of the ocean economy: discussion of one pillar is incomplete without considering the effects that changes in it may have on the other.

Although work is ongoing in various international fora to develop the standards and guidelines required to account for the marine environment, coherent cross-country statistics are not yet available. The quantitative elements of this report are therefore focused on statistics on ocean economic activities. The marine economic-environmental linkages described in this report use either ad-hoc data from external sources or are dealt with qualitatively. As and when internationally comparable statistics on marine environmental-economic linkages become available, the OECD Ocean Economy Monitor will expand to include them. This novel OECD programme provides a unique platform for measuring the global ocean economy over time using harmonised country-level statistics and other data sources.

The OECD Blueprint for Improved Measurement of the International Ocean Economy (Jolliffe, Jolly and Stevens, 2021_[6]) provides a definition of ocean economic activities for the purposes of scoping statistical measurement. The OECD Eight Lessons Learned from Comparing Ocean Economy Measurement Strategies Across Countries (Jolliffe and Jolly, 2024_[7]) working paper uses principles from the system of national accounts to highlight commonalities and differences in approaches and provides recommendations for integrating ocean economy measurements with national statistics. The OECD Ocean Economy Monitor applies definitions from the OECD Blueprint and many of the principles of national accounting from the OECD comparison of national approaches to the measurement of international statistics on ocean economic activities.

Current scope and coverage of measurements of the international ocean economy in the OECD Ocean Economy Monitory and featured in this report

Ocean economic activities are defined in the OECD Ocean Economy Monitor and this report according to the OECD Blueprint (Jolliffe, Jolly and Stevens, 2021_[6]) as groups of establishments from any institutional sector engaging in the same or similar kinds of economic activity that:

• take place on or in the ocean

• produce goods and services primarily for use on or in the ocean

• extract non-living resources from the marine environment

• harvest living resources from the marine environment

• use living resources harvested from the marine environment as intermediate inputs

• would likely not take place were they not located in proximity to the ocean, or,

• gain a particular advantage by being located in proximity to the ocean

The economic statistics produced for the OECD Ocean Economy Monitor and presented in this report are currently harmonised across 33 individual ocean economic activities for 142 coastal countries between 1995 and 2020. Each ocean economic activity is measured as distinct from all others so that ocean economic activities can be aggregated into wider groupings called ocean economic activity groups. There are seven ocean economic activity groups and the economic statistics in this report are generally focussed on this level of aggregation. Estimates of the total ocean economy refer to the aggregation of all 33 currently measured ocean economic activities within a country. The links between the three levels of the hierarchy in the OECD Ocean Economy Monitor are presented in Table 1. Estimates of the global ocean economy in this report refer to the aggregation of all 33 currently measured ocean economic activities in all countries.

Table 1. Ocean economic activity classification in the OECD Ocean Economy Monitor

Ocean economic activity	Ocean economic activity group	Total
Marine fishing	Marine fishing, marine aquaculture & marine fish processing	Total ocean economy
Marine aquaculture
Marine fish food processing
Marine fish beverage processing
Offshore oil & gas extraction	Offshore oil/gas extraction & offshore industry
Offshore industry
Offshore wind electricity generation	Offshore wind & marine renewables
Marine renewable energies electricity generation
Maritime shipbuilding	Maritime shipbuilding & maritime equipment manufacturing
Maritime equipment manufacturing
Maritime transport	Maritime transport & maritime ports
Maritime ports
Marine & coastal tourism: Accommodation	Marine & coastal tourism
Marine & coastal tourism: Food & beverage
Marine & coastal tourism: Road & railway transport
Marine & coastal tourism: Water transport
Marine & coastal tourism: Air transport
Marine & coastal tourism: Transport rentals
Marine & coastal tourism: Travel agencies
Marine & coastal tourism: Sport, culture & recreation
Ocean research & development services	Marine & maritime industry trade, transport & R&D services
Marine fishing trade services
Marine fishing transport services
Marine aquaculture trade services
Marine aquaculture transport services
Marine fish food processing trade services
Marine fish food processing transport services
Marine fish beverage processing trade services
Marine fish beverage processing transport services
Maritime shipbuilding trade services
Maritime shipbuilding transport services
Maritime equipment trade services
Maritime equipment transport services

The estimation procedure uses a range of internationally comparable datasets with country-level data drawn from the tables underlying the OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) database. The 2023 edition of the OECD ICIO tables (2023 edition) used for this analysis cover 76 economies, plus a category comprising “the Rest of the World” (Table 2). Given the consistent measurement method used across countries, these statistics are can be aggregated to form estimates of the global ocean economy or further disaggregated to compare the size of ocean economic activities to each other or across countries.

Table 2. The OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) database currently includes 76 countries with a “rest of the world” category

Countries included in the ICIO database

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Belarus, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, China (People's Republic of), Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Egypt, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Hong Kong, China, Croatia, Hungary, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Japan, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Korea, Lao (People's Democratic Republic), Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Morocco, Mexico, Malta, Myanmar, Malaysia, Nigeria, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Thailand, Tunisia, Türkiye, Chinese Taipei, Ukraine, United States, Viet Nam, South Africa

Note: The OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) tables serve as an international statistical framework, mapping the flows of production, consumption, and investment within countries, as well as international trade in goods and services between countries. These flows are categorised by economic activity and country, providing a consistent and comprehensive global perspective.

Source: To learn more, visit OECD (2025), OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) database.

This internationally comparable approach does not account for all ocean economic activities included in every national ocean economy study, which are measured by individual countries using differing methodological approaches. For example, the OECD approach does not currently include economic activity belong to the industrial category ‘public administration and defence’ since there are no existing internationally comparable data sources from which these estimates could be derived. This category has been measured at the national level in some studies, such as the US Marine Economy Satellite Account by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some national studies might therefore present larger national ocean economies than presented in this report, because of the chosen scope, different coverage of activities and methodological approaches.

Country groupings used in the report

Country groupings used in this report are based on either United Nations regional country groupings or World Bank country income groups. Income groupings change slightly every year and consequently cannot be detailed to the full extent in this document. Please refer to the World Bank World Bank Country and Lending Groups for the countries belonging to each group in each year.

Table 3. United Nations regional groupings used in the report

United Nations regional group	Countries
Eastern Asia	China, Japan, Korea
Europe	Albania, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom
Latin America and the Caribbean	Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela
Northern Africa and Western Asia	Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Northern America	Canada, United States
South-eastern Asia and Oceania	Australia, Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Vanuatu, Viet Nam
Southern Asia and Central Asia	Bangladesh, India, Iran, Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
Sub-Saharan Africa	Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo

Source: See the United Nations Regional groups of Member States for more details.

Table 4. Other country groupings used in the report

Countries’ grouping	Countries
OECD	Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, United Kingdom, United States.
EU 27	Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
G7	Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States.
G20	Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom, United States, the European Union, the African Union.

Glossary of technical terms used in the report

The following section presents the definitions of key economic terms found in this publication.

• Chained volume index: Measures changes in the quantity or quality of goods and services produced over time independently of changes in the price level. Chained volume indices provide a more accurate measure of growth than fixed-base indices (often called "constant prices") but are non-additive, meaning components of an aggregate cannot be summed up directly.

• Current prices: Monetary value of goods, services, and assets at the time production takes place expressed as an absolute figure.

• Full-time equivalent (FTE) employment: Total annual hours worked in an industry divided by the average annual hours worked in full-time jobs in an industry.

• Gross output: Industry aggregate of the goods or services produced within establishments and made available for use outside of the producing establishment plus any goods and services produced for establishments’ own final use.

• Intermediate consumption: Industry aggregate of the goods and services consumed as inputs in production, excluding fixed assets whose consumption is recorded as consumption of fixed capital.

• Gross value-added (GVA): Industry aggregate of the value of gross output less the value of intermediate consumption.

• Multi-factor productivity (MFP): An indirect measure of the efficiency with which multiple inputs, typically labour and capital, are used to produce output in the production process. It reflects the portion of output growth that cannot be explained by the accumulation of these inputs alone. Changes in MFP capture factors such as technological advances, improvements in management practices, organisational changes, and economies of scale.

• Single Input Factor Productivity (SFP): it measures how efficiently a single input—such as labour or capital—is used to produce output. It is a partial productivity measure that does not account for the combined effects of multiple inputs.

• Territorial sea: A belt of water which extends up to 12 nautical miles from the baseline of a State and which is regarded as sovereign waters of that State.

Selected references of the readers’ guide:

Jolliffe, J., C. Jolly and B. Stevens (2021), “Blueprint for improved measurement of the international ocean economy: An exploration of satellite accounting for ocean economic activity”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2021/04, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/aff5375b-en.

Jolliffe, J. and C. Jolly (2024), “Eight lessons learned from comparing ocean economy measurement strategies across countries”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2024/01, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/1cb42a67-en.

Yamano, N. et al (2025), “Development of the OECD Inter Country Input-Output Database, 2023 edition”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, OECD Publishing, Paris (forthcoming).