The exploitation of marine bio-resources through biotechnological solutions is a field with massive potential for innovation, economic growth and support for the ecological transition in the blue bioeconomy sectors. As a relatively young discipline, we need to build capicity for the coordination of these opportunities and facilitate key enabling factors to ensure it's success. Despite the promising prospect, the development of the marine (or blue) biotechnologies in the Mediterranean region faces specific bottlenecks. This is often down to the high fragmentation of business innovation and lack of knowledge transfer from research to business. In this regard, blue biotech value chains move from and are linked to many different sectors and, especially in the Mediterranean area, research and innovation are often developed as isolated initiatives.
The B-Blue project (Building the Blue Biotechnologies Community in the Mediterranean—https://b-blue.interreg-med.eu/) seeks to address the abovementioned issues. B-Blue has been financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the call for strategic projects under the Interreg-Med programme. It sees a two-year collaboration of ten partners from eight Mediterranean countries with proven experience in the Blue Bioeconomy field. The project is led by the Department for Sustainability of ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies’ Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.
So far, it has involved more than 600 Mediterranean companies, universities, research centres, public authorities, business support organizations and Mediterranean multilateral organisations, with a goal of creating the Med’ Blue Biotech community. The main activities were the creation of five national hubs and further strengthening the international potential across eight Mediterranean countries: Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.
The ultimate goal of B-Blue is to support the capacity building and the innovation transfer to facilitate the implementation of marine biotech in the Mediterranean area. This includes the creation of value chains but also the development of joint and integrated plans, initiatives, programs and policies that boost the marine biotech sector and its potential of addressing the Sustainable Development Goals at the Mediterranean level.
The hubs of the B-Blue project have been activated and developed in the Gulf of Manfredonia (Italy), the Murcia Region (Spain), the Southern Coast of France, the coastal area of Slovenia and in the Athens Region (Greece). These participatory open innovation spaces addressed at least one of the following value chains: algae production for high value compounds (Italian, French, Spanish and Greek hubs), aquaculture and fisheries discards in other productive sectors (Italian, Spanish and Greek hub), sustainable integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (Italian, French and Greek hubs) and sustainable valorisation of marine bioresources in the cosmetic sector (Slovenian hub).
The overall coordination framework of the project is developing, and all the project activities have been linked with other ongoing EU and Mediterranean initiatives to empower the strategic potential of the project. Among them, the Aquawest working group on sustainable aquaculture of the Westmed Initiative, the community of experts of the Ocean4Biotech project, the activities on the Transformative Innovation methodology of the PANORAMED project, and the overall activities of the Blue Bio Med project that launched a ‘call to action’ for a Mediterranean Blue Innovation Deal (https://blue-bio-med.interreg-med.eu/blue-bio-meds-call-to-action/).
Moreover, B-Blue participated in the definition and promotion of the Mediterranean Innovation Alliance on Sustainable Blue Bioeconomy, a coordination framework addressing the Blue Bioeconomy sectors, and are contributing to the activation of a specific working group on marine biotech.
The Mediterranean Innovation Alliance is intended as an open platform to enhance and streamline efforts ongoing both at transnational and territorial levels to build on innovation to move towards sustainable development in blue bioeconomy. The Alliance has a twofold nature. Firstly, a network/coalition of organisations sharing an interest in marine biotech from different perspectives and commitment to promote blue bioeconomy sustainable development across the Mediterranean. And secondly, a community of people directly involved in the Alliance activities, feeding the discussion, stimulating networking, and animating the activities.
The framework of the Alliance and its main objectives has been defined during co-design workshops organised by Blue Bio Med and B-Blue. The last workshop will be held in Cádiz, Spain in September and hosted by the final event of the Blue Bio Med project. The Alliance is then scheduled to be launched later in 2022 and the work of the B-Blue community will continue in a wider coordination framework promoting the enabling conditions for the unexpressed Mediterranean potential of the marine bioresources exploitation through biotechnological solutions.
This feature appeared in Environment, Coastal & Offshore (ECO) Magazine's 2022 Autumn edition, to read more access the magazine here.
