Rio de Janeiro's ocean economy as a key vector for sustainable development in Brazil

The ocean economy is becoming more than ever a key to job creation, value addition, and sustainable development of countries and regions. Given the growth of the world population and the pressure on onshore resources, the demand for marine resource exploration and maritime activities is growing, leading to different policies around the world. In the case of Brazil, a country with an extensive coastline, there are still few public policies and official definitions/data capable of fostering the ocean economy. Hence, this paper aims to map the sectors of the ocean economy of the state of Rio de Janeiro (SRJ), highlighting its potential for recovery of the local economic dynamics. To this end, the methodology considers the economic sectors that present a direct influence from the sea, encompassing 89 economic activities that were divided into 6 sectors. The treatment, cleaning, graphics, and maps created from R 4.2.2 used the following packages: tidyverse, basedosdados, paletteer, ggthemes, systemfonts, ggtext, sf, geobr. 2021 is the base year for the data, which used two main official Brazilian bases: Annual Social Information Report (RAIS) and tax data from the Internal Revenue Service, compiled by Datalake Neoway. Among the main results, we highlight the relevance of the service sector, particularly those related to the oil and gas industry (P&G) and tourism.

Automated summary

The ocean economy is crucial for job creation, value addition, and sustainable development, but Brazil lacks public policies and official data to foster its ocean economy. This paper maps the sectors of the ocean economy in the state of Rio de Janeiro and highlights its potential for local economic recovery.