Panos Panayotidis. Blue Growth to assure sustainable development in the Mediterranean Sea.

Blue growth is a long – term strategy that tries to overcome the environmental problems associated with traditional economic activities, designing an adequate legal framework to create economic development based on the most innovative sectors and the respect of the environment.

Panos Panayotidis, from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, also highlight the need for a better coordination between Marine Protected Areas: “We have more than 1.000 MPAs and I think that we need a kind of association of these MPAs to give them common possibilities of monitoring, common understanding of the problems and common understanding of the measures and solutions”.

The European Interreg – Med Program promotes this type of solution with projects such as PHAROS4MPAS. It develops Blue Economy and Maritime Spatial Planning through collaboration between MPAs managers and the maritime sector.