Duke researchers set out to determine how governments around the world are responding to oceanic plastic pollution. Their search led them to compile and analyze an inventory of nearly 300 policies instituted between 2000 and mid-2019 to address the issue.

The blue economy concept could help policy makers more fully consider the marine environment together with economic growth to help meet the United Nation’s oceans sustainable development goal. John Virdin, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, is studying how governments in the United States and abroad might apply the blue economy concept to increase rates of economic return without depleting or damaging ocean ecosystems, which would put not only natural resources but also jobs and economic growth at risk. 

The ocean economy contributed $2.1 billion and 43,385 jobs to North Carolina’s economy in 2013, according to a new report by North Carolina Sea Grant and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Ocean and coastal resources played an even larger role in the state’s coastal counties, providing 6.5 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP, and supporting 13 percent of employment. And according to “North Carolina’s Ocean Economy: A First Assessment and Transitioning to a Blue Economy” report co-author Tibor Vegh, these figures are most likely low. “Our estimates represent a snapshot in time only for the sectors where we could find economic data,” Vegh, a policy analyst with the Nicholas Institute, tells CoastWatch.

A new report published by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University seeks to uncover under what conditions a substantial, decentralized domestic biogas market could develop in the United States by 2040. This article in Biomass Magazine details the findings of the report, titled “Biogas in the United States: An Assessment of Market Potential in a Carbon-Constrained Future.”