Presentation short abstract

In Southeast Asia, the proliferation of the blue economy enables the expansion of novel crop insurance schemes and agri-technologies that make seaweed farmers investable entities by individualizing decision-making, disrupting production relationships, and constructing new frontiers of extraction.

Presentation long abstract

Transnational blue economy discourse is operationalized via projects of financialization in particular marine spaces by new assemblages of coastal actors, investors, and government officials, reflecting a shift in development practices to an agenda driven by the private sector. Research exploring the implications of blue economy discourse for coastal livelihoods is limited and fails to consider sectors beyond fisheries and the specific financialization apparatuses involved. In Southeast Asia, the proliferation of the blue economy has enabled the expansion of index-based crop insurance and cloud-based agri-technologies. This is the case with the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance's (ORRAA) pilot program in marginalized seaweed farming communities in the Philippines. Through a multi-year ethnographic study in Philippine seaweed farming communities, I investigated the importance of local socio-natural and production relationships, such as how farmers learn and choose how to farm as well as collaboratively experiment with new strategies. I found that the novel insurance scheme and digital agri-technologies of ORRAA's program disrupt and reformulate these relationships by individualizing decision-making processes to encourage farmers to work more ‘smartly’ and become investable and insurable entities. Draped in apolitical terms of community empowerment, these new technologies and their data represent the continuation and deepening of capital penetration into these coastal spaces, producing new frontiers of extraction and commodification. Farmers' autonomy is at stake as they are drawn into new relationships with global markets and their experiential knowledge and interests are subordinated to those of blue economy developers seeking to (re)territorialize the seas.