The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs

The Blue Economy began as a project to find 100 of the best nature-inspired technologies that could affect the economies of the world, while sustainably providing basic human needs - potable water, food, jobs, and habitable shelter. Starting with 2,231 peer review articles Dr. Pauli and his team found 340 innovations that could be bundled into systems that function the way ecosystems do. These were then additionally reviewed by a group of corporate strategists, expert financiers, and public policy makers. Further meetings with entrepreneurs, financial analysts, business reporters, and corporate strategy academics reduced the list to one hundred. These are listed in an appendix of The Blue Economy. Many of the innovations inspired by nature are so interesting by themselves it is easy to forget that the key to the book is their integration with real world economies as ways to provide sustainable benefits to the commons. The Blue Economy is presented in 14 chapters, each of which investigates an aspect of the world's economies and offers a series of innovations capable of making aspects of those economies sustainable.