Dealing with Maritime Economy at the Local Level. Trends along the Coastal Poland

¹ Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, 00-818 Warsaw, Poland
² University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Economics, Armii Krajowej 119/121, 81-824 Sopot, Poland; Institute for Development, Czyżewskiego 6/1, 81-706 Sopot, Poland

^* Corresponding author: b.szejgiec@twarda.pan.pl

Abstract

Although the interest in the concept of ‘blue economy’ has grown rapidly in recent years, the most studies assess maritime activities’ size, scope, basic trends or position in national economy mostly at the basin/national, sometimes even regional level and there has been little research taking into account the local dimension of maritime economy. This is partly due to a lack of appropriate statistical data concerning maritime economy. The aim of the analysis is to define and describe the local maritime economy in Poland as well as to establish its importance for various territories. This study considers the challenges that maritime local studies face in terms of data availability and provides a research path that is to some extent complementary to analyses at the national and regional level. It explores a two-step approach to measure and evaluate a maritime local economy in Poland in 2016: (1) a more general countrywide attempt to identify the problem; (2) addressing the local dimension of blue economy in the spatially limited area (coastal regions). Moreover, the approach allows to identify territorial differences (functional region types), the extent to which these activities differ among local economies and the pathways for maritime economy structures transitions along the coastal Poland.