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Green Atlantic for Sustainable Development

The Stakes

Maritime safety is becoming a major political concern in the face of the crises of the last 20 years and the increasing number of serious environmental accidents.

Those Atlantic area regions situated along the energy supply route and at the crossroads of the North-South and East – West shipping corridors are directly affected by the development of world maritime and transport and in particular the transport of very dangerous polluting materials which necessitate the strictest compliance with safety regulations.

Several projects and reports such as EROCIPS or “Maritime Goods Safety and Traffic Safety” by the RTA make recommendations with regard to these environmental problems. The CRPM, at the request of the INTERREG IIIB monitoring committee, carried out a transnational co-operation mission on maritime safety between May and September 2004.

The green paper, presented last June, concludes the need for member states, regions and players to adopt new strategies in the face of world competition by taking preventative steps to environmental risks and by being proactive in terms of competitiveness. If the effects of a degrading environment on tourism, fishing and natural resources is evident to all then research and innovation mainstreamed into the dynamics of a region and fuelling an economic engine is still underestimated. This new concept of integrated management of maritime zones goes beyond the framework of coastal activities alone and necessitates new coordinated strategies between countries as well as for collective humanitarian activities. It concludes that competitiveness is based on advanced technologies and services of which science and knowledge are two fundamental facets.

Indeed, maritime safety, taken in its widest meaning as, maritime transport and environmental safety, constitutes a new challenge for maritime, European and world economies. The work of the European Commission on new European policy clearly indicates a positive resonance with development strategies which are based on safeguarding the environment and increasing the innovation capacity of the regions.

The Project

The project “Green Atlantic for Sustainable Development” is both a process of integration and development of competences and methods aimed at creating a European platform of expertise and action for maritime and environmental safety issues. “GASD” will integrate past and current work and use this as a basis for working on environmental issues and making recommendations, from a broader perspective (economic, human resources, science etc), on durable operational solutions built on the common policies of the Atlantic area – Europe.

The project will introduce for the first time within the framework of interregional co-operation, a concrete vision, integrated and operational from the perspective of sustainable economic development, based on an innovative approach to maritime safety and applied to the collective maritime activities of the partner regions. This vision will be translated into practical demonstration actions on which can be built European policies and regulations integral to maritime safety, technical, scientific and technological innovation, and economic development.

From this point of view, the project will bring together the Atlantic area’s maritime regions exposed to the risks of the shipping route as well as those with strong experience in the prevention, management and clean-up of maritime ecological catastrophes. It will in addition associate regions whose resources depend on fishing and tourism, and those where the concept of sustainable economic development is fundamentally: protecting assets and anticipating the future. The project will bring together expertise developed by regions and their public and private partners, mobilize their competences and be driven by industrial and scientific solutions with significant added value. This will lead to the creation of a multidisciplinary cluster that will reinforce the attractiveness of all regions in the Atlantic area, making it one of the world’s leading hubs for knowledge and competitiveness in the field of maritime and environmental safety – “The cluster of Maritime and Environmental Excellence”.
It will comprise:

- Phase 1 : “GASD 1”, with a duration of 22 month and focused on “How to prototype the future cluster of Excellence”. Defining the essential elements.

- Phase 2 : “GASD 2”, focused on the implementation of the cluster of excellence taking into consideration the results of GASD 1

A- General objectives
This new approach to maritime and environmental safety takes into account the two-fold challenge facing maritime regions, through:
- a proactive approach to environmental protection, including stringent regulation of entities involved in maritime economic development so as to protect the tourism and fishing resources specific to these regions
- a diversified plan for regional economic development that respects the environment by encouraging activities offering significant added value in science and technology, industrial applications, training, etc.

The method used will seek to capitalize on the experience of the Atlantic Areas maritime regions in managing maritime disasters and port operations. It will also focus international attention on regional public and private-sector partnerships in two areas: R&D and training.
Pooling these resources to meet shared objectives should encourage the emergence of a major competitiveness cluster that will be at once a standard-setter and a focus for the exchange of best practices for other maritime regions in Europe and the rest of the world.

B- Specific objectives:

The Green Atlantic for Sustainable Development project focuses on three priorities for maritime safety:

fostering a new level of cooperation for a transnational project addressing this world-scale issue
building on experience and concentration of know-how to create the first European platform of expertise in maritime safety, with international exposure
developing activities with significant added value in science and technology to attract the business, experts, investors and innovation that play an integral role in maritime safety sciences.

It will give their economic development a boost even as it helps meet the expectations of international public opinion, with the following results:

economies of scale due to the type of partner involved
synergies due to the range of initiatives and expertise on hand
visibility through the issues addressed and the resources used
political and media clout

potential links with other maritime regions both in Europe and further afield, notably in the United States, Asia and India as part of an overall program of scientific and economic cooperation.

Partners

The Work Programme

GASD OVERVIEWS

Agenda

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