WORK PACKAGE 6: Stakeholder Engagement and Community Integration

Work Package 6 focuses on ensuring the project outcomes are stakeholder-driven and mission-oriented, that they match end user needs and feed more effectively into policy processes and support the EU and its member states reaching its biodiversity targets.

Work Package Objectives

Create and mobilise a Community of Practice (CoP) for stakeholders across the marine biodiversity knowledge value chain to optimise knowledge generation, transfer and uptake of project (and wider) marine biodiversity knowledge outputs.

Enable stakeholder consultation and co-design of data, data products that better meet user needs and requirements across the policy, civil society, industry (blue economy) and research (data) stakeholder groups.

Monitor progress and the impact of MARCO-BOLO on improving the delivery and uptake of data and information products as part of a more coordinated marine biological observing system.

Progress highlights

2024

2025

Led by UNESCO and Seascape Belgium (SSBE), the first Community of Practice (CoP) event was held jointly with the first co-design/co-creation workshop on 23 May 2024. The title of the event was “Making Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Observations Policy Relevant”. It was attended by more than 70 biodiversity or marine data experts and other stakeholders from research centres, European, national, regional and international organisations.

The 4th online meeting of the Core CoP was held on 9 October 2024. This was a special meeting because Coordinators of Biodiversa+ and EuropaBON presented and discussed the future European Biodiversity Observation Coordination Center (EBOCC) and its connection with the marine observation community. The meeting was attended by 35 participants representing members of the MARCO-BOLO Core CoP, project consortium, relevant Directorate Generals from the European Commission (DG MARE, DG ENV, DG RTD), Global Ocean Observing System Biology and Ecosystems (GOOS BioEco) Panel, sister EU projects, as well as other key members of the wider biodiversity monitoring, observation and scientific community.

The 2nd Co-design/Co-creation Workshop was held on 6th November in Sitges, Spain, as part of The Future of Marine Biodiversity Monitoring in Europe. The workshop “Solutions for Improving Marine Biodiversity Monitoring” was chaired by the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR) and welcomed more than 50 stakeholders.

Targeted Co-design/Co-creation sessions between technical WPs and user communities are due to happen in 2025 and will be organised and chaired by The Marine Biological Association (MBA).

The University of Vienna (UniVie) conducted a survey on biodiversity data needs in 2023, and some results will be presented as a policy brief in 2025.

Seascape Belgium (SSBE), with support from WP6 partners, will lead the development of Knowledge Transfer assets that build upon Tasks 6.1 and 6.2 while drawing upon stakeholder feedback to develop impactful resources to disseminate key outputs from the project.

Lead partner:
SSBE & UNESCO

Contact:

Vicente Fernandez (SSBE)｜vicente.fernandez@seascapebelgium.beLisa Benedetti (UNESCO)｜l.benedetti@unesco.org
Ward Appeltans (UNESCO) | w.appeltans@unesco.org

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