PROBLUE: Healthy Ocean, Healthy Economies, Healthy Communities

This joint PROBLUE-ESMAP webinar provided an overview of the Seawater Air-Conditioning (SWAC) technology, shared experiences from existing facilities in the developed world and presented feasibility studies for three SWAC facilities in the Caribbean.

Plenary Session: Towards an Equitable, Viable and Sustainable Economy

One Ocean Summit, Brest, France 

Virtual Regional Workshop

Learn Blue is a training program led by PROBLUE and organized in cooperation with the World Bank Group's Open Learning Campus (OLC). The series offers World Bank Group staff and external experts the opportunity to learn about blue economy tools and activities. Go to this dedicated webpage for more.  

This session looked at the cutting edge Lean:Evolved technology and its transformative effects on food processing, food storage, and aquaculture. Experts from Collaborative Impact walked particpants through case studies and demonstrated how Lean:Evolved advances adaptability, decreases expenses, improves productivity, and fosters profitability. 

This session explored the Plastic Policy Simulator (PPS) and the Plastic Substitution Tradeoff Estimator (PSTE), two tools that aim to help countries assess the true costs of plastics and substitute products, and simulate which policies to implement to ensure all actors along the plastic value chain move toward a circular model. These tools have been developed by the Word Bank, with PROBLUE support, as part of the report Where Is the Value in the Chain? Pathways out of Plastic Pollution. 

This webinar presented an overview of the main current certification schemes, including key global certification stakeholders in the aquaculture space such as the Aquaculture StewardshipCouncil (ASC), Global GAP, and the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA). The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) showcased examples of national standardization programs in South East Asia, including Vietnam and Thailand. The webinar also shed light on the recently approved FAO Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture, which are an important milestone towards the development of future standardization and certification programs.

This workshop showcased tools of the Fisheries Sector Assessment Toolkit (FSAT). FSAT is a set of practical diagnostic and analytical tools, the development and uptake of which has been supported by PROBLUE, focusing on capture fisheries. Participants had the opportunity to participate in a hands-on demonstration of the use of two new tools on aquatic food value chains and two previously developed tools, on fisheries infrastructure assessment and local economy-wide impact evaluation using biological information. Experts with substantial experience in value chains and fisheries infrastructure or in the use of a tool led the workshop sessions.

This event focused on the sustainable development of the offshore wind sector in developing countries. The workshop shared good practices and lessons learnt and showcased the tools, analysis, and activities undertaken by the World Bank Group (WBG) Offshore Wind Development Program. Participants also had the opportunity to learn about lessons learnt from the offshore wind experiences in Colombia, India, Philippines, and Vietnam.

This event provided an overview of the current state of seaweed production by giving the audience a tour of the knowledge platform ‘Seaweed Insights’, a practical guide to global seaweed farming which is based on the work carried out on the ground across the world’s major seaweed producing regions. The session also highlighted recent analysis on seaweed market opportunities for novel products and applications from seaweed biomass and shed light about recent developments in seaweed aquaculture in Tanzania and Madagascar.

This event focused on Marine spatial planning (MSP), one of the most effective tools through which the World Bank is supporting client countries in reaching their Blue Economy goals. In the first session, participants learned about the World Bank Marine Spatial Planning for a Resilient and Inclusive Blue Economy Toolkit, as well as the MSP country efforts financed by the World Bank. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO also presented their MSP capacity development trainings. The second session was a hands-on interactive workshop using SeaSketch, a web-based application used globally for collaborative MSP.

The first edition of the Blue Academy focused on the application of the Blue Economy Development Framework (BEDF) and the Blue Public Expenditure Review (Blue PER) – a set of integrated analytical tools that help countries define a roadmap for a sustainable management of coastal and marine resources and address gaps to improve fisheries governance, reduce marine pollution, promote coastal tourism, and strengthen knowledge. The session looked at how BLUE PER and BEDF are applied in Pakistan, the Caribbean, and Mozambique.