The multi-stakeholder’s approach is at the core of the regional dialogue on Blue Economy and at the heart of the UfM mandate. In this regard, the Mediterranean Blue Economy Stakeholder Platform (MedBESP) was created to ensure the involvement of different stakeholders in a dynamic and interactive way, being a regional networking platform for sharing knowledge and supporting the development of the blue economy. It allows the facilitation of coordination and links among initiatives, programs and projects of relevance to blue economy, triggering the final impact of the existing initiatives.

The Mediterranean Blue Economy Stakeholder Platform has been proven to expand the Blue Economy community, to ensure flow of information and communicate all content types in an appealing, engaging, shareable way, to engage the community, to get platform users to share content and connect with each other. 

The governance structure is designed in different levels to assure and assist with a continuous and regular regional dialogue around a common agenda on Blue Economy.

It is structured around three components and notably, the Blue Economy Working Group, the Stakeholder Conference/Event(s) and the Mediterranean Blue Economy Stakeholder Platform.

The  well-established UfM Blue Economy Working Group that meets once or twice per year. The UfM Secretariat is in charge of organising the meetings, including up to 2 participants per member country and a broad range of representatives of different stakeholders categories (Managing Authorities, International Financial Institutions, Academia, Local Authorities, etc). Regular communication among partners ensures an effective functioning of the partnership between agencies during the overall implementation of the project’s activities. The main tasks of the group are:

• Review the whole implementation of the Ministerial declaration;
• Inform the group about regional and national advancements;
• Exchange views and information
• Review the implementation process and make decisions on the necessary changes that could potentially emerge;
• Review main project expected results and outputs;
• Propose measures to strengthen linkages with other relevant national, regional and global initiatives.

Ministers from the 42 Union for the Mediterranean countries have agreed to intensify their efforts towards a sustainable blue economy in the Mediterranean. Doing so, they want to ensure the sustainable development of the region around its main shared good – the Mediterranean Sea; promote the recovery of the region’s economies from the COVID-19 crisis; and address the environmental and climate challenges the region is facing.

The key areas of cooperation agreed by the 42 UfM countries are: governance and the future of sea basin strategies in the Mediterranean region; marine research and innovation, skills, careers and employment; sustainable food from the sea: fisheries and aquaculture; sustainable, climate-neutral and zero-pollution maritime transport and ports; marine litter; coastal and maritime tourism; Maritime Spatial Planning and Integrated Coastal Zone Management; marine renewable energies; maritime safety and security; sustainable investment​​.

Together with the Ministry of Environment, the Sustainable Landscapes of the Amazon Program -ASL- World Bank and the Norwegian Embassy, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations -FAO-, World Wildfile Fund -WWWF-, Office National des Forêts -ONF Andina-, Fondo Acción and Corazón de la Amazonia, which joined ExpoBosques, we have been working on the design of a sustainability strategy to promote the platform as a continuous source of information, for which ExpoBosques has been working on the design of a sustainability strategy.Fondo Acción and Corazón de la Amazonia, which joined ExpoBosques, have been working on the design of a sustainability strategy to promote the platform as a source of continuous information, for which the following steps have been considered:

1. Systematize the impacts of the experiences, (impacted areas, benefited families, commercialization, etc.), with which information on the contributions of sustainable forest management can be obtained.

2. Expobosques in person, to facilitate the exchange processes and the generation of agreements to promote replication.

3. Promote a regional platform to connect the experiences of different Amazonian countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, etc.) and strengthen the exchange of knowledge. This will make experiences that generate positive impacts visible and raise awareness among the general public.

The Resilient Family Livestock project is the result of an inter-institutional articulation process that includes:

• First degree family producer organizations (6 Rural Development Societies), second degree (National Commission for Rural Development - CNFR), and third degree of regional coverage (Confederation of Family Producer Organizations of MERCOSUR - COPROFAM).
• The National Agricultural Research Institute (INIA), a public entity under private law.
• The Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), a government agency that provided political backing for the development of the action.

This network interacted with other institutions such as the University of the Republic (UDELAR), the Ministry of the Environment (MA), the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation (AUCI), IICA and the Delegation of the European Union in Uruguay.

Essential elements for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services for sustainable development are the equitable participation of stakeholders and the organizational development of local management associations.  The project has set up a stakeholder forum bringing together all the sectors involved in the park to identify areas of ecological, economic and social interest for which there is a will of the populations to protect and manage them.  Its mission is to manage conflicts related to the exploitation and conservation of natural resources, to promote the capacity building of actors, to encourage the emergence of research in the sustainable management of natural resources.  This forum has the technical support of the project for their organizational development as well as for technical and financial management, including the monitoring of the rules for the use of their resources.  These rules of use were drawn up in a participatory manner for each buffer zone.  To do this, a series of consultation sessions was organized for each village.

Kelp Blue is a commecial entitiy founded by Daniel Hooft in February 2020. Its business headquarters are in Zeist, The Netherlands. It has a subsidiary in Namibia with operational headquarters in Luderitz, Nambibia. At the moment it employs 12 full time employees, 5 part-time employees and 4 interns. The gender balance is 50% female, 50% male. Its mission is "to rewild the oceans by cultivating giant kelp forests"

Giant kelp is drastically understudied given the benefits it can deliver. The promise of cultivated kelp and its ecosystem services need to be quantified and unlocked to speed up the expansion of kelp cultivation at scale. This will help mitigate climate change and create sustainable products which will displace the current more environmentally damaging products.

The Kelp Forest Foundation was set up to help address the gap in science and knowledge around giant kelp forests’ ecosystem services – and to ensure this new knowledge is publicly available to companies, governments, regulators, not-for-profits, academics, and other stakeholders in order to accelerate the awareness and application of cultivated kelp forests as a powerful nature-based solution.

Hortimare, a Dutch-based company, is one of the few companies in the world specialising in the genetics, breeding and propagating of seaweed. Hortimare works with Kelp Blue to create starting material, increase yield and research on best growing techiniques of the Macrocystis pyrifera specie.

This Building Block aimed to develop a regional roadmap on MSP and sustainable blue economy agreed by the seven beneficiary countries, as well as neighboring countries involved in another regional activity focused on blue economy (WestMED Initiative): Algeria, France, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Libya, Portugal and Mauritania. National Focal Points were invited to provide recommendations according to their relevance to five specific themes; these recommendations were then compiled in a survey and prioritized by the National Focal Points and other National Experts. The most voted recommendations were selected and rephrased (when necessary) to compose the regional roadmap.