Stakeholders Map

Blue Economy is not by itself an industrial sector. This made the identification and categorization of stakeholders in the proposed database a major challenge. Acknowledging the lessons learned from the compilation and analysis of FANBEST Blue Economy Stakeholder Directory we are able to define a set of conclusions and recommendations on the BE stakeholder landscape of the Atlantic Area.

  • Sectorial support: 72% of stakeholders providing financial support independently from the Blue Economy sector, in particular, public institutions (EU and national), research institutions, higher education/academia.
  • Sectoral representativeness: among the Blue Economy sectors identified within this research, seabed mining is substantially underrepresented in the analysis.
  • Support Blue Economy through Multi-Use: It was noticed that the only financial instrument within the analysis that actively supports a soft Multi-Use deployment on local scale is the CLLD with pescatourism (small scale fishery or aquaculture and coastal tourism) activities, enhancement of the natural/cultural heritage with sustainable seafood harvesting or production.
  • Territorial specificity of financial support: should be better designed towards the dependency of the beneficiaries acting in sub- areas and the dependency to specific biotic and abiotic marine resources. This may lead also to geographically and sectorial specializations that can provide new opportunities to showcase products, services and qualifications with a high value in the Atlantic Territory and beyond.
  • Align Blue Economy support to the Atlantic Strategy: the Atlantic suffers from the absence of Blue Economy support mechanisms that could operate in similar mechanisms as established in other European sea basins, such as the BlueMed-Initiative or the Facility for Blue Growth in the Black Sea.
  • Methodologies for addressing Blue Economy support on sea basin level: The developed Blue Economy stakeholder mapping methodology provides a scalable and flexible approach in the analysis of Blue Economy landscape in the Atlantic Region.