BlueGreen Governance

The main goal of BlueGreen Governance is to develop innovative land-sea governance schemes based on scientific evidence and societal choices.

The current management of oceans, seas and coasts is fragmented across multiple institutional layers and policy areas and based on past experience.

BlueGreen Governance pursues an innovative approach to the governance of the seas and coastal areas that: promotes integration between institutional layers and across policy sectors with a clear impact on the use of the land and the sea; involves and engages citizens in decision-making processes, while at the same time including scientific evidence; responds predictively to changing physical conditions as indicated by scientific evidence as well as indigenous and local knowledge and citizen science; and uses e-governance tools in support of the previous three points.

With this focus and approach, the project responds to the need for better-informed decision-making processes, social engagement and digital innovation while promoting more harmonious and effective science-policy-society interfaces.

The promotion of better science-policy, science-society and society-policy interactions will be embedded in the digital transformation and application of e-governance tools for co-design and service delivery.

BlueGreen Governance will implement and assess these innovative governance schemes in 8 cases across several European regions and sea basins and will draw lessons on how to trigger and facilitate effective institutional change via capacity building.

The cases are: Comunidad Valenciana; North Adriatic; the Solent; Western Scheldt; Oslofjord; Canary Islands and Reunion.

With this geographical scope, the project will investigate five marine basins (Western Mediterranean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean), including one transnational marine basin (i.e. the North Adriatic case) and one transnational river basin (i.e. the Western Scheldt case).