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Maritime Sustainable Blue Bioeconomy

Maritime Sustainable Blue Bioeconomy
Maritime Sustainable Blue Bioeconomy

Context

The partnership intends to capitalize results achieved at regional and international level, coming from regional previous experiences and knowledge as well as from EU funded projects on different topics related to Blue sectors. The partnerships will thus capitalize first hand, Blue Biomed, MISTRAL and B-Blue, to mention some, but also many others that the members of the partnership will share, so to avoid "re-inventing the wheel" but further strengthen relationships, knowledge and expertise to build together a more competitive, innovative and sustainable maritime blue bioeconomy.

Year established: 2023

Regions (lead and partner)

  • Leading regions: Emilia Romagna (IT), (co-lead) Apulia (IT)
  • Participating regions: Crete (EL), Attica (EL), Slovenia (SI), Balearic Islands (ES), Catalonia (ES), Andalusia (ES), Lazio (IT), Alentejo (PT), Albania (AL), Kosovo (XK), Republic of North Macedonia (MK), Acores (PT), Adriatic Croatia (HR)

Mission

The Partnership's mission is to strengthen European regions' innovation capacity beyond the targets agreed in the Florence joint declaration of 20 September 2012, by strengthening interregional collaboration on innovation, competitiveness and sustainability, focusing on precision- and smart farming in the Partnership’s relevant areas like winery, protected cultivation, agro-ecology, and others.

The vision of the Partnership is to develop a collaboration structure fitting within ERIAFF, being an active partner of the Coordination Committee of the network of the European Regions for Innovation in Agriculture, Food and Forestry. Dissemination and implementation of innovations in precision- and smart farming, sustainability, digitization, monitoring will be achieved through sharing, information, best practices and collaboration projects, also driven by the selected working groups and their objectives.

Objectives

The partnership, along with its members’ wide expertise and knowledge, aims to:

  • To build capacity to design, implement and evaluate a new wave of innovation policies at different scales to move towards sustainable blue bioeconomy
  • To promote collective innovation actions to boost blue bioeconomy potential to generate shared value (economic social, environmental) either making existing value chains more sustainable by fostering emerging sustainable niches and business or exploiting the untapped potential of blue bio resources to foster sustainable development in all sectors. This joint collaboration aims to strengthen a more cohesive, competitive, innovative and sustainable cooperation area.

Main activities

During the 1st year, the Partnership has worked to define its internal structure, setting up the Thematic Working Groups, appointing Coordinators and Vice coordinators, selecting services offered by the S3 CoP and accepting requests to join the partnership by new members. Some updates concerning projects have been provided by those members that are involved in EU funded projects, launching the idea to involve MasBBE in meetings arranged within them, considering that the partnership does not have financial support yet. To this extent, exchanges between partners aim at the new EMFAF call, seen as an opportunity to present a joint proposal. In addition to it, the partnership is shaping the internal structure through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) whose content has been discussed and we are now in the phase of collecting Letters of Support and Commitment.

The partnership has agreed to focus on four specific topics, crossing priorities defined in the S3 strategies as starting points to work together, as outlined in the figure.

Organisations involved

  • Innovation Center of Attica Region
  • Technology Park Ljubljana
  • Generalitat de Catalunya
  • Junta de Andalusia
  • Lazio Region
  • Alentejo Region
  • Digital innovation Hub Innovamare
  • National S3 team, Deputy Prime Minister Office
  • Government of the Republic of Kosovo, Strategic Planning Office
  • Gobierno Regional Balearic Islands
  • ART-ER S.CONS.P.A
  • Maritime Cluster of Balearic Islands
  • Alentejo Regional Development Agency
  • Croatian Chamber of Economy – Zadar County Chamber
  • Cyprus Energy Agency (CEA)
  • Cyprus University of Technology (CUT)
  • Chrysalis LEAP
  • Maritime Cluster of Andalusia
  • NCSR Demokritos
  • Ruđer Bošković Institute
  • University “Aleksander Moisiu” Durres - Faculty of Business
  • Hellenic Centre for Marine Research - Institute of Oceanography
  • BIG- Italian National Technology Cluster - Blue Italian Growth
  • National Research Council - Earth system science and environmental technologies
  • CREDA
  • FORUM OCEANO
  • Zadra-Nova
  • ARTI (Regional Agency for Technology and Innovation)
  • Team 4U
  • University of Tirana
  • University of Vlora
  • Union of Albanian Producers
  • Institute for Sustainable Development, Environment and Tourism (InSET)
  • Regional Center for Development and Cooperation
  • National Institute of Biology
  • Clúster Marítimo de Cataluña – Pimec
  • ASSET (Strategic Agency for Territorial Eco-Sustainable Development)
  • Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Food - Skopje
  • IMK Doo, Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia (laboratory)
  • Ministry of Economy of the Republic of North Macedonia
  • Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of North Macedonia
  • ENEA
  • Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
  • Ministry of Tourism and Environment
  • Agriculture University of Tirana
  • Lazio Innova
  • Osservatorio Mediterraneo Mar Nero
  • Governo dos Acores
  • Croatian Chamber of Economy – Zadar County Chamber

Shared smart specialisation areas

  1. Marine biotic resources, including sustainable fisheries & aquaculture, Waste valorization, Standards & product certification
  2. Marine environment and biodiversity conservation, including challenges like marine plastic litters, invasive alien species
  3. Blue biotechnologies as enabler to a sustainable blue bioeconomy, cutting across economic sectors & value chains
  4. Digitalization of the Blue Bioeconomy, including educational & entrepreneurial aspects, collaborations with R&D, and the discovery of new biotech compounds

Related projects

Contact

Latest news and upcoming events

  • The Partnership has been announced and disseminated at several event at Ecomondo International Fair (https://en.ecomondo.com/#), taking place in Rimini, from the 5th to the 8th of November 2024: the ecological transition ecosystem, where industry, stakeholders, policy makers, opinion leaders and local authorities meet and talk.