As the full week of European Ocean Days concluded in Brussels, we feel ever more inspired and energised and look forward to working towards our sustainable future.
BioProtect partners represented the project during the entire week in various panels and workshops, including the one on “Harmonizing Monitoring Approaches & KPIs” across Mission Ocean CSAs and Projects”, in which both Harald Hasler-Sheetal from ICES, and Sophie Jensen, the BioProtect coordinator, participated.
Together with our sister project PHAROS, as well as Blue4All, MSP4Bio, Blue Connect and Marine Plan, we participated in the design and presentation of an MPA card game to entice participants to learn about MPA corridors when visiting our booth! The game turned out to be a huge hit and participants enjoyed learning about MPAs while actively engaging in marine conservation discussions!
Last but not least, Vera Hausner from The Arctic University of Norway presented our project at the 4th EU BlueParks Workshop during “Session 1 – Strict protection state-of-play and case-studies”.
The presentation was part of a Q&A session, and it focused on the identification of conservation areas and conflicts through participatory mapping.
During the session, it became clear that PPGIS platforms are a very useful tool for community engagement. In many of the presentations, the need for community involvement, culturally grounded participatory processes and the social license to carry through MPA processes was raised as an issue, so here BioProtect possibly has something different to offer!
A week of inspiring talks, innovative ideas, new projects and plenty of networking among new and old friends.
We feel more than inspired to work together to achieve the Mission Ocean goals!
