Project description
A sustainable seafood solution
As climate change intensifies, coastal and terrestrial fishing communities in Europe face severe challenges. While progress on climate action at the national level remains sluggish, local initiatives are stepping up to address the crisis. The EU-funded COOL BLUE project aims to empower communities to self-organise and embrace sustainable seafood practices. Not only will this initiative rejuvenate ecosystems but it will also foster community cohesion, creating resilient, self-sufficient socioecological systems. COOL BLUE’s vision extends across Northern Europe, encompassing the Baltic and North Sea basins, uniting regions and initiatives to accelerate the development of low-impact ocean farming systems. Together, they strive to achieve the Mission Work Programme’s goal of ocean and water recovery by 2030.
Objective
Coastal and terrestrial fisheries communities in Europe, often economically marginalised, are likely to face severe impacts as climate change becomes more acute. Although progress on climate mitigation and adaptation from national governments remains slow, local development actions can also address these impacts from the bottom up. Transformation to a post-carbon society undoubtedly requires additional, targeted support and extensive educational activities at the local level. The primary objective of COOL BLUE is to create frameworks for communities to self-organise and rediscover healthy, low-impact seafood. This healthy, beautiful, tasty food simultaneously revitalises ecosystems while bringing communities closer together, creating resilient, self-sufficient and self-sustaining socioecological systems which can withstand emerging global threats such as climate and demographic change. The COOL BLUE project will create a Northern European network of community-led initiatives in the Baltic and North Sea basins. This network will facilitate closer collaboration between regions, combining efforts across parallel projects and initiatives (e.g. PREP4BLUE, BlueMissionBANOS), while accelerating the development of commercially self-sustaining, low-impact, inclusive ocean farming systems in line with the Mission Work Programme to contribute to the recovery of our ocean and waters by 2030.
Fields of science
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- social sciencessociologydemography
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
10827 Berlin
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.