MISTRAL Blue Growth Book. State of the art assessment and overview on the most relevant drivers and opportunities in the Mediterranean Blue Economy.

Today, Blue Growth is recognised to be an economic opportunity, source of jobs and driver to sustainable development for Europe. The EU Blue Growth strategy defines and supports actions and framework in order to unlock the potential of seas and oceans and, to address this big challenge, a number of initiatives have been already launched across Europe. According to the Annual Economic Report of Blue Economy (EC, 2018), Mediterranean states account for four of the five largest shares in blue economy. Nevertheless, the overall potential of Mediterranean Sea could be better exploited in terms of blue growth and jobs. The lack of homogeneity and a poorly managed overall use of diverse and numerous resources - that goes from local biodiversity, tourism, renewable energy production, and so on - represent a major limit to guarantee the long-term capacity to sustain such economic activities. This challenge can only be implemented by the development of a common and shared vision that includes all MED Countries for a sustainable use of sea resources. This report aims to assess challenges and opportunities within the Blue Growth sector looking at innovation driven actions in order to deliver the highest impact a thus open opportunities for stakeholders. The report not only looks at the well-established sectors in the recent years, but also at those emerging sectors considered to be promising in the future in terms of innovation capacity and potential of investment. An integrated and systemic approach is necessary for the economic growth and innovation exploitation in the BG as part of a process that comprises and involves different attributes and frameworks that may not always be aligned. In this context, an overall benchmark analysis is performed at MED scale and key indicators are taken into account in order to find the drivers for exploitations, the so-called Innovation Potentials. The identification of characteristics and assets of each sector will highlight the implementation scenario (enabler factors) for each innovation potential, as a prerequisite to concentrating clusters, investors and resources around an accomplishment-oriented vision of their exploitation. Long-term impact of this action will result in strengthening the regional innovation systems, orient investment toward sustainable growth, maximising of knowledge transfers within and across Regions and in reducing the lack of homogeneity of innovation along Mediterranean Regions. The report will set the basis for a step forward on Mediterranean growth and for a more sustainable use of sea resources. The Blue Growth scenario at the Mediterranean level is here described by looking at the most expanding sectors in the recent years and to those emerging sectors considered to be the more promising in the future i.e. Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) - Fishing & Aquaculture (F&A) - Maritime Surveillance (MS) - Blue Biotechnologies (BB) - Coastal and Maritime Tourism (C&MT). After a general overview of Blue Growth size and trends around the Mediterranean Sea, an in-depth descriptive analysis with an assessment of the current status and opportunities is provided by sector as a whole result of data integration on Albania, Cyprus, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal (Countries part of the MISTRAL Interreg MED project). The report gives a cross-sectorial analysis of the entire assessment by highlighting potential synergies among sectors and trying to align enabling factors in order to obtain reference for stakeholders who intend to exploit or invest in the Mediterranean's Blue Economy.