The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership announced a new joint transnational call entitled “Unified Paths to a Climate-Neutral, Sustainable, and Resilient Blue Economy: Engaging Civil Society, Academia, Policy, and Industry”. The call aims to support transnational research and innovation projects of 36 months duration, addressing one of the four priority areas presented below.

Deadline (pre-proposals): 10 April 2024

(full proposal: 06 November 2024; provisional date)

The four priority areas are:

1) Digital Twins of the Oceans (DTO) at regional sub-basin scale;

2) Blue economy sectors, development of marine multi-use infrastructures;

3) Planning and managing sea-uses at the regional level;

4) Blue Bioresources.

Projects in this call must be impact-driven contributions to the transformation into a blue economy for a more resilient future and towards carbon neutrality targets, following an impact pathway approach. The proposals are expected to consider a minimum of two European sea basins and to assess the project proposal’s impact on various basins. To be eligible, each consortium must be composed of eligible partners from at least three different countries participating in the call and requesting financial support from at least three different funding organisations participating in the call. Applicants are strongly encouraged to involve stakeholders as partners or self-funded partners in their proposals. Stakeholder engagement in the research projects will enhance innovation, policy, and societal relevance and ultimately the impact of the projects.

For Portuguese beneficiaries, the maximum funding will be 250 K€ in projects with Portuguese coordination and 150 K€ in projects with Portugal as a partner. If two or three Portuguese applicants from the same international consortium apply for funding, the total budget to be requested from the Portuguese beneficiaries cannot exceed the cumulative sum per consortium.

If you want to apply and are seeking partners, use the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership Partner Search Tool available here.

The call documents are available here. A general informative webinar will be organised by the Partnership on 15 February (13:00h-15:30h) to present and answer questions regarding the call. You can register here.  

If you are thinking of applying, please get in touch with us (cesam-gesciencia@ua.pt).