More than 80 actors in management and ocean protection – governmental decision-makers, institutional organisations, scientists, members of the private and public sectors – have been meeting at the ninth edition of the Monaco Blue Initiative, organised in partnership with the University of Edinburgh on April 8 and 9.
Members of the Monaco Blue Initiative want to lay the foundation for a new model of development for the oceans and for a blue planet; a form of development which promotes new activities and new services, while at the same time leaving room for nature, letting the marine ecosystems function normally and acknowledging the inestimable services they are already rendering.
The initiative of the Marine Protected Areas is central to this. On the programme, three sessions of exchange and debate on the Blue Economy in the Northern Seas, the Marine Protected Areas and Climate Change, and Aquaculture and the Marine Protected Areas.
Participants in the Monaco Blue Initiative will discuss the present state of protection of the open sea and its biodiversity, and the consequences of the International Marine Protected Areas Congress in Chile.
In 2017 major initiatives were taken in favour of the oceans, such as the commitments made at the UN Conference in Support of the Implementation of SDG14 in New York, and at the Our Ocean congress in Malta, the opening of formal negotiations for a new international treaty on the open sea on the horizon in 2020 and the protection of the Ross Sea.
These results are the fruits of global awareness brought about by the mobilisation of the energies of all the actors, among them the Monaco Blue Initiative.
Launched in 2010 on the initiative of Prince Albert, the Monaco Blue Initiative is a platform for discussion that seeks to create synergies between socio-economic development and the protection of marine ecosystems.
The Monaco Blue Initiative, co-organised by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the Oceanographic Institute, Fondation Albert I, Prince de Monaco,