Urška Starc Peceny and Mamuka Berdzenishvili presented the project T4BS, lessons learned, and project plans at The Black Sea Green diplomacy event the 16 November 2020 in the Session on Sustainable Blue Economy. Together with other experts from regional projects they explored how the regional dimension of cooperation on Blue Economy can facilitate and scale up the contribution to Green Deal objectives and resilient recovery process.
Common conclusions from the session:
- Reinforcing cooperation and working together is the unique way forward to ensure joint challenges (the pandemic, the green transition)
- Need for investments in Research and Innovation, digitalisation and big data/cloud computing which are key cross-cutting enablers to ensure that we move as fast as possible towards a green transition and that blue economy sectors evolve towards sustainable business models while becoming resilient to future potential shocks.
- Developing better knowledge of natural habitats and their biodiversity, and opportunities for tourism.
- The availability of data (on the environment, the blue economy sectors, including the impact of COVID-19) will be of crucial importance to support informed policymaking and decision planning with evidence.
