Photo by Mikhail Nilov
Learning how to advance marine protection lies at the heart of the BLUE4ALL project.
At the beginning of next year, this work sets out to the partnering MPAs and MPA networks, aiming to test and co-create robust and replicable social, governance, ecological and environmental tools to meet marine conservation objectives.
Three work packages within BLUE4ALL (WP2, WP3, and WP4) have worked together to outline the workflow of this highly collaborative process. The work has already begun with a survey sent out to the project’s Information Sites and the Living Labs. This initial survey aims to generate an understanding of ongoing MPA processes, and on how relevant information has been incorporated in these processes within the Information Sites and the Living Labs.
Once this baseline information is gathered, the next stage is to identify the specific knowledge gaps and tool needs of the Living Labs. Based on these results, the representatives of the Living Labs will receive suggestions for potential tools they can test as part of their MPA management.
Stakeholder engagement groups will be established for each Living Lab in early 2024, and these groups will play a central role in the process of tool co-creation. The real-life implementation of suggested tools will proceed in collaboration with the experts from BLUE4ALL, and the feedback from the stakeholder engagement groups is an invaluable source of information that will eventually feed into the web-based Blueprint Platform – an online MPA toolbox – that is the final output of BLUE4ALL.