BlueRev at the 2nd Mission Arena by BANOS Blue Mission
On April 25th and 26th regional actors from the Baltic Sea region came together in Riga Latvia for the 2nd Mission Arena forum to address the needs, challenges and opportunities for more environmentally friendly blue growth. Mission Arena had more than 230 participants and 18 sessions ranging from showcasing blue bioeconomy projects, local initiatives and start-ups to various discussions and workshops on marine protection, sustainable production, jobs and tourism opportunities in coastal communities, low trophic cultivation, green shipping, innovation ecosystem and other topics.
BlueRev project was presented by the team from Estonian University of Life Sciences. Mission Arena offered an opportunity to both present the project results and to collect data for the ongoing activities. Together with BlueBioClusters, Prep4Blue projects and Submariner network a session was organized on “Viable business models for a sustainable blue economy: How can we improve interaction between research, public sector and the business community?”.
The session started with presentation on the ongoing projects and proceeded with group discussions. The BlueRev team led the discussion on “Business Models for innovative, sustainable macroalgae applications”. Development of new business models for local communities is one of the aims of BlueRev project and part of its WP3 and WP4 activities. The group discussed the various challenges related to the ecological boundaries of the Baltic Sea region, scalability of new models and approval of new compounds from macroalgae and interests of local industries. The potential new business model discussed was related to combination of seaweed and wind farming.
BlueRev team will follow up the business model discussions in different workshops in the pilot regions in the next months.
