BleuTourMed - Maritime and Coastal Sustainable Tourism in the Mediterranean

Plan Bleu is partner of BleuTourMed, a project coordinated by the Latin Arc to support Maritime and Coastal Sustainable Tourism in the Mediterranean Region.

Built on a transnational partnership with strong knowledge and experience on integrated coastal management and sustainable tourism policies, BleuTourMed aims at supporting and ensuring synergies between the modular projects selected under the Specific Objective 3.1 of the Interreg Med Programme 2014-2020.

Specific Objective 3.1 focuses on creating a cluster of projects able to enhance jointly solutions for the protection and promotion of natural and cultural resources in the Mediterranean area, through a coherent strategy of Community Building, Communication and Capitalisation. This Community is composed of the 17 following projects: ALTER ECO, BLUEISLANDS, BLUEMED, CASTWATER, COASTING, CO-EVOLVE, CONSUME-LESS, DestiMED, EMbleMatiC, HERIT-DATA, INHERIT, MEDCYCLETOUR, MEDFEST, MITOMED+, ShapeTourism, SIROCCO, TOURISMED.

Therefore, BleuTourMed project is developing its activities in order to stimulate the sharing and co-ownership of knowledge among these 17 projects and promote their results at the Euro-Mediterranean scale.

BleuTourMed is also in charge of processing and disseminating these results for the implementation of the policy framework regarding coastal and maritime sustainable tourism.

BleuTourMed partners are willing to share knowledge and best practices, to enhance existing experiences among key stakeholders, and to create new partnerships for promoting and strengthening new policies towards a more sustainable Mediterranean tourism.

Different approaches for the Community’s activities

Four main issues have been identified by BleuTourMed project, in order to guide joint actions and the capitalisation of the Community’s results:

• Monitoring the sustainability of tourism: what are the knowledge gaps of policy-making processes? How to bridge the data gaps on tourism?
• How to reduce the environmental-cultural- social impacts of tourism in the Mediterranean region?
• How can the tourism sector ensure a sustainable and responsible economic growth and prosperity in the Mediterranean region?
• How to address the complexity of the tourism sector, including local actors, decision-makers and consumers? Governance mechanisms to guide a wide variety of stakeholders towards a more sustainable and responsible tourism.

In order to reach these objectives, the projects had the opportunity to gather around two working groups to share their approaches and methodologies :

• Strengthening sustainable and responsible tourism
• Implementing innovate approaches in the Mediterranean coastal and maritime areas

Events

In the framework of the European Week of Cities and Regions, the MED Sustainable Tourism Community will organize on the 9th of October 2019 its event “Fostering sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean region“. This event has the objective of triggering the discussion on the importance of a sustainable approach in European tourism, with a special focus on the Mediterranean area and the next programming period.

This event, organised in the framework of the European Week of Cities and Regions, has the objective of triggering the discussion on the importance of a sustainable approach in European tourism, with a special focus on the Mediterranean area and the next programming period. The Final Conference of the MED Sustainable Tourism Community was held on June 4-7th 2019 in Barcelona (Spain). This event was the occasion to present to numerous stakeholders of the Mediterranean, the main achievements of the community and the policy paper, sharing policy recommandations for a sustainable tourism.

The 3rd event of the MED sustainable Tourism Community was held in Split (Croatia) on the 27th and 28th March 2019. During this event, a capitalization workshop was organized, gathering all the projects of the community. Participants continued the work on strategic topics of the Mediterranean tourism sector, started in Marseille in November 2018, with the facilitation of external experts.

The 2nd capitalisation event of BleuTourMed of the MED sustainable Tourism Community was held in Marseille (France) on 20th and 21st November 2018. Organized by Plan Bleu, this event was designed to mainstream project’s results into recommendations for tourism policies.

It gathered more than 60 participants, representatives of the 14 projects of the community, as well as sustainable tourism experts. In the framework of the 2nd edition of Ecomondo that was held in Rimini, Italy, on 6th-9th November 2018, BleuTourMed organized, with 5 other Interreg MED thematic communities (Green Growth, Blue Growth, Renewable Energy, Urban transports and Biodiversity Protection), a session on “Empowering territories for a sustainable Mediterranean“.

The Midterm Conference, organized by BleuTourMed project in Rome (Italy) on 29-30 May 2018, is the first capitalization event of the MED Sustainable Tourism Community. It aimed to present the state-of-play of the implementation of the projects involved in the community and to discuss the preliminary recommendation of the Med Community coming from the projects’ first results.

Built on the concept of Fablab “Fabrication Laboratory”, the MADE in MED event held in Rome on April 18-19th, 2018, gathered the eight community’s of the INTERREG MED Programme 2014-2020. The event presented the first results of the 90 projects of the Programme through a conference and an exhibition. These two days were an opportunity to convey the idea and values of co-working, knowledge sharing and innovation but also to look towards the future of cooperation in the Mediterranean.

BleuTourMed’s second event took place in Athens, on October 4-5th 2017, under the topic: “Making tourism more sustainable: Sharing methodologies for a joint action”. The participants had the opportunity to discuss about methods to strengthen sustainable and responsible tourism in the Mediterranean and to implement innovative approaches in the Mediterranean coastal and maritime areas.

The project’s kick-off meeting took place in Marseille, on March 16-17th 2017, with the participation of 14 projects of the Community on Sustainable Tourism. This meeting helped to reinforce the links among the projects and BleuTourMed partners, and to draw an action plan for the Community.

The 17 projects of the Community

• ALTER ECO: Alternative tourist strategies to enhance the local sustainable development of tourism by promoting Mediterranean Identity.
• BLUEISLANDS: Seasonal variation of waste as effect of tourism.
• BLUEMED: Plan/test/coordinate Underwater Museums, Diving Parks and Knowledge Awareness Centres in order to support sustainable and responsible tourism development and promote Blue growth in coastal areas and islands of the Mediterranean.
• CASTWATER: Coastal areas sustainable tourism water management in the Mediterranean.
• COASTING: Defining a common methodology for integrated coastal tourism using ICZM, coastal contracts and bay contracts.
• CO-EVOLVE: Promoting the co-evolution of human activities and natural systems for the development of sustainable coastal and maritime tourism.
• CONSUME-LESS: Consume Less in Mediterranean Touristic Communities.
• DestiMED: Mediterranean Ecotourism Destination: main components (joint planning, monitoring, management and promotion) for a governance system in Mediterranean protected areas.
• EMbleMatiC: Emblematic Mediterranean Mountains as Coastal destinations of excellence.
• HERIT DATA: Sustainable Heritage Management towards Mass Tourism Impact thanks to a holistic use of Big and Open Data
• INHERIT: Natural heritage tourism for the Mediterranean coastal and maritime areas.
• MEDCYCLETOUR: MEDiterranean CYcle route for sustainable coastal TOURism.
• MEDFEST: MED Culinary heritage experiences: how to create sustainable tourist destinations.
• MITOMED+: Models of Integrated Tourism in the MEDiterranean.
• ShapeTourism: New shape and drives for the tourism sector: supporting decision, integrating plans and ensuring sustainability.
• SIROCCO: Sustainable InterRegional cOastal & Cruise maritime tourism through Cooperation and joint planning
• TOURISMED: Tourism fisheries towards a sustainable development in the Mediterranean Region.