PREP4BLUE aims to inspire, engage, and involve citizens and stakeholders to interlink, leverage, and optimise activities among the Mission’s projects.
Five EU Missions have been proposed as a novel way to find solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing our world. One of the missions dedicates to 'Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030'. It seeks to protect and restore marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity, prevent and eliminate pollution of our ocean, seas, and waters, and make the Blue Economy sustainable, carbon neutral, and circular.
As the first building block to this mission's implementation, the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme funded the PREP4BLUE Coordination and Support Action (CSA) with €5 million. PREP4BLUE commenced on 1 June 2022.
In parallel, the European Commission launched a Mission Implementation Charter at the UN Ocean conference in June 2022 in Lisbon, calling on a wide range of stakeholders, including public or private organisations, national/regional/local authorities, philanthropists and investors, enterprises and businesses, civil society, research and academia to adhere to the Mission Charter by putting forward actions contributing to the Mission objectives.
PREP4BLUE's overarching objective is to develop the R&I implementation modalities required to achieve the Mission objectives and to facilitate a successful first phase (2022-2025) of the Mission. Preparing the ground for a Mission inspiring and engaging citizens and stakeholders, PREP4BLUE emphasises co-creating and co-implementation. The project delivers a series of tools, guidelines, methodologies and recommendations tested through pilots, which interlink, leverage and optimise activities among the projects funded under the Mission. Our systemic approach fosters cohesion and connectivity between knowledge and technology, funding, regulation, education and skills, social structures and co-creation with R&I actors, citizens and stakeholders.
PREP4BLUE's multidisciplinary consortium is actively engaged in sea basin-based strategies and related R&I activities. The consortium includes strong experience in co-developing business models and recommendations for policy-makers, expertise in stakeholder engagement and social sciences related to participative democracy and citizen engagement, as well as excellent track-record in methodologies for knowledge management and transfer.
PREP4BLUE also carries out strategic actions to assure the alignment of our CSA with the evolution of the Mission components, including the Mission Core Network, other contributors to the Mission and other Missions. The project helps prepare and empower all relevant stakeholders to play an active role in the Mission.
JPI Oceans is leading two Tasks: One in the Work Package on Project Coordination, Synergies, and Communication (WP1) and one in the Work Package on Supporting an Enabling Environment (WP5):
Task 1.3 – Creation of synergies with European initiatives and organisations
Task 1.3 seeks to amplify the call for mission action by mobilising signatories to join the Mission Charter. The task identifies collaboration potential with relevant initiatives and organisations and becomes part of the Mission development, with a particular focus on making links between Ocean and Water actors for R&I. This requires forming a network and regular interaction with (1) European Partnerships; (2) Research Infrastructures across the land-ocean continuum (e.g. ESFRI Projects / Landmarks); (3) Sea basins initiatives with regionally focused SRIAs (4) EU Macro-regional marine strategies (5) Regional intergovernmental instruments such as River basin commissions, Regional Sea Conventions and Regional Fisheries Management Organisations; (6) Scientific organisations and advisory bodies.
Task 5.3. Elaborating Public/Private Funding Opportunities for Continuous Mission Roll-Out
Task 5.3 seeks to and map, analyse, and elaborate potential public/private funding opportunities for the Mission. AI tools are used to map the relevant existing funding programmes and sources (public [EC, national, regional, local], private [banking, VC, corporate], philanthropic). New, innovative funding models are analysed (e.g. blended financing, cascade financing, pre-commercial procurement, prize, crowdfunding). Insights from diverse stakeholders are systematically gathered about their financing needs vs opportunities, in order to identify funding models and instruments to enable successful Mission implementation across e.g. scientific disciplines, quadruple helix domains, inclusive R&I approaches, and TRL levels. The task supports funders to invest their funds to achieve maximum tangible impact and result in a collective vision of how to fund scale up solutions especially as of 2025 onwards (D5.3).
Follow project activities and news on Twitter @PREP4BLUE and on the project website PREP4BLUE.eu. Follow @eumissionocean on Twitter to learn about opportunities to engage with this important initiative, and visit EU Missions in Horizon Europe to learn more about the EU Missions.