Forum de la Mer in Tunisia: Towards sustainable blue growth in the Mediterranean
20-21 September 2019, Bizerte, Tunisia. The UfM co-organized the 2nd edition of the Forum de la Mer, held in Bizerte, in Tunisia the 20 and 21 September 2019, gathering political leaders, scientific communities, civil society actors, entrepreneurs and experts from the two shores of the Mediterranean, in order to share their expertise for a reasonable exploitation of the sea and the coast.
The Forum de la Mer provided this year the opportunity to exchange progress among countries of the region on the blue economy and environment dossiers. The UfM, represented by Isidro Gonzalez, Deputy Secretary General of the division Water, Environment and Blue Economy, organized a session on Blue Skills and highlighted the importance of the UfM flagship project of Lake Bizerte depollution program, as a concrete example how the regional cooperation can contribute to solve challenges that will contribute to efforts of Mediterranean depollution and job creation.
This 2nd edition develops a Forum de la Mer primarily focused on public, private and associative initiatives and a call for projects, under the name AMWEJ (“the waves”), was launched. Open to coastal initiatives developers, AMWEJ aims to reward the best projects factors of economic and sustainable development for the Tunisian coastal and will benefit from expertise, engineering coaching and financing.
More in detail, the Forum de la Mer contributes to the concrete implementation of two important UfM policy documents, namely the UfM Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Climate Change, adopted in May 2014 in Athens, as well as the UfM Ministerial on Blue Economy, adopted in November 2015. The dialogue on these two dossiers has become stronger and stronger and the package of associated initiatives, projects and activities larger and larger. As examples, some regional or sub regional initiatives are present today such as WestMed, BlueMed, InterregMed Blue Growth Community, Panoramed, etc. as well as many projects on plastic marine litter, integrated coastal zone management and maritime planning, tourism, sustainable consumption and production, maritime clusters and more.
