From Tuesday 13th of June until Thursday 15th of June 2023, the 3rd General Assembly of DOORS Project was held at Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon, Turkey. The goal of this GA was to bring together all partners and country leaders and discuss the progress and development of the project.
ATHENA RC team was represented by Dr Ebun Akinsete and Ms. Lydia Papadaki. The project brings together expertise and technology from 37 institutions from the Black Sea region and other European countries to address the human and climate change impacts on damaged ecosystems. During the GA, we also visited the METU research vessel Belim, that was in Trabzon for the BRIDGE-BS research cruise. ATHENA RC team presented their work to the consortium receiving positive feedback.
On Wednesday 14th of June, during the 3rd General Assembly, ATHENA RC together with KANTOR organized a common workshop aiming to present the findings of the MAFs, Blue Economy policy review and survey results and discuss if they accurately depict what is happening in the DOORS countries, if there is a sector, challenge, EU/Black Sea policy that is missing from the picture, and how the intermediate outputs of T8.4 can support activities in other Work Packages.
Since June 2022, ATHENA RC worked on the development and delivery of the Multi-Actor Forums (MAFs) framework. We mapped the stakeholders together with the Country Leaders who run the MAFs in each country, provided training for the Country Leaders and implemented the 1st round of MAFs in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia. In addition, ATHENA RC in collaboration with WP6 and WP7 developed a survey on the Blue Economy needs and policy gaps assessment in the DOORS countries and disseminated it with the support of the Country Leaders who translated it in local language and shared it with their networks. ATEHNA RC also conducted a Blue Economy Policy Mapping and the Gaps and Needs Analysis using the results from the 1st round of the MAFs and from the survey. ATHENA RC also initiated some bilateral discussions with WP3, WP6, WP7 and WP9 seeking to identify synergies and new ideas on how we can cooperate more closely, as depicted in the figure below.
H2020 DOORS project aims to make operational the Black Sea SRIA, support the successful Blue Growth implementation and contribute to a healthy, productive and resilient Black Sea. DOORS will build on previous programmes of research to bring the four pillars of the SRIA into reality, turning the challenges into opportunities and making the Black Sea highly valued, productive, healthy and resilient. This will be delivered through three integrated work programs: System of Systems (SoS), Blue Growth Accelerator (BGA), and Knowledge Transfer and Training (KTT).
ATHENA Research and Innovation Centre, Sustainable Development Unit is participating in the DOORS H2020 project. Principal Investigator (PI) is Prof. Koundouri and members of the team are: Dr Akinsete and Lydia Papadaki.