Blue Economy on a way

The 1st Advisory Board (AB) Meeting of the Blue Economy project met at the Plan Bleu premises, in Sophia Antipolis, on 7-8 July 2015. The AB is composed of the renewed experts in sustainable development, ICZM and sustainable consumption and production and first provided comments and suggestions to the overall project activities, and in particular how best relate and link the project with other on-going initiatives, such as the MSSD, SCP and ICZM Action Plans and EcAp.

The project is funded by the MAVA Foundation and will be carried out by the three MAP Regional Activity Centres (RACs), namely, Plan Bleu, SCP and PAP during the next 18 months. The full title of the project is “A blue economy for a healthy Mediterranean – measuring, monitoring and promoting an environmentally sustainable economy in the Mediterranean region”. The project is structured along three main components: define and monitor; support the implementation; and promote and mainstream an environmentally sustainable economy. The latter is under PAP/RAC responsibility and includes the organisation of two regional conferences (one as the Coast Day 2016 event); preparation of promotional materials including a video, and an on-line platform, newsletters and a web site, as well as the promotion of the project and its advocacy within the Barcelona Convention and other multilateral initiatives. The major output of the first component is to prepare a study/report on blue economy and a sustainability dashboard for the blue economy with a set of selected indicators in order to monitor the process of the blue economy (by Blue Plan), and the second one on promotion of good practices and promising cases of blue economy including the exhibition and a series of workshops on eco and social innovations (by SCP/RAC).

Also, the scope of the project and the priority sectors were discussed in detail. During a very fruitful and constructive discussion some very good suggestions were jointly agreed that will guide the project team to accomplish the project activities.