SUPPORTING EUROPEAN COASTAL REGIONS IN THEIR TRANSITION TO A SUSTAINABLE BLUE BIOECONOMY

The Blue Bioeconomy defined as ‘the production and conversion of renewable marine biological resources into value added products, such as food, feed, bio-based products and bioenergy’ entails a large set of opportunities for European coastal communities. Innovative business models based on circularity; short-chains, digital solutions and ecosystem contributions offer the chance to stabilize and create new enterprises and jobs also for the lower-educated; while transforming remote, rural areas also into interesting, revitalized, climate-friendly places to live. However, blue bioeconomy actors struggle with challenges related to technology, lack of knowledge & skills or regulatory barriers. BlueBioClusters brings together 12 support organizations from across Europe, all of them highly engaged in their 9 regions in assisting start-ups, companies and policy makers to make best use of innovations. They have joined forces to improve, develop and implement new support tools and methods based on systematic collection, benchmarking and joint knowledge creation on *blue biobased value chains, practice cases and incentives, WP2; *ecosystem service valorization, WP3; *technology needs, identification and transfer of solutions, WP4; *start-ups/SMEs; experts and support mechanisms (coaching; co-creation), WP5; as well as *‘Communities of Practices’, to foster long-term stakeholder cooperation within and across the regions; WP6. While we expect to create long-lasting impact already within the project lifetime by engaging with hundreds of actors within our regions to stimulate collaboration and actions for change; activities are designed to be continued post-project, being also open for other Blue Regions, clusters and individual companies to join. To that end, the inter-active BlueBioCluster platform will not only serve as a repository of the projects’ outputs in terms of stakeholders and services, but is set up in such way, that it will be continuously updated and maintained by and with its users also post-project.