The FAIRSEA is a European Territory Cooperation project financed under the priority 1 “Blue innovation”, Specific Objective 1.1 “Enhance the framework conditions for innovation in the relevant sectors of the blue economy within the cooperation area” of the INTERREG V-A Italy–Croatia Programme 2014-2020. The project focuses on the fisheries sector, key driver for the blue growth of the Adriatic communities, towards a sustainable co-management of resources and marine ecosystem protection.
The transboundary nature of marine resources requires a cross-border cooperation and a shared “Vision” to properly tackle and address the different socio-economic and environmental challenges related to fisheries activities management.
In this context, FAIRSEA Project aims at enhancing transnational capacity and cooperation in order to promote the sharing of knowledge and good practices between regional and transnational key actors in the sector of sustainable fisheries management in the Adriatic Sea as well as to implement innovative approaches adopting an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF).
Coordinated by the OGS of Trieste (IT), the project involves a consortium of 12 strategic and operational partners from Italy and Croatia that will make to best use of their complementary expertise to address and support the application of the EAF ensuring a strong and interactive engagement of institutional, technical and socio-economic stakeholder in project activities.

The main result of the FAIRSEA Project will be the development of an integrated platform for a quantitative ecosystem approach to fisheries that goes across territorial boundaries and across several disciplines.
The platform will integrate biological/ecological processes (i.e. considering water mass circulation, physical-chemical properties, plankton productivity, dynamics of resources including their interactions) and fisheries bio-economic dynamics (including fisheries displacement). This high technological and innovative platform will be used as a planning tool to implement demonstrative testing of applicable fisheries policies both at local (subareas) and Adriatic scales.
It will provide a scientific basis for formulating and evaluating the shared management advice in the local and international participatory processes, involving management authorities, experts and stakeholders.
The Project will also provide an answer to the need of reference points, best practices and guidelines for the optimisation between ecological and socio-economical sustainability of fisheries in the Adriatic Sea.

FAIRSEA is financed by Interreg V-A IT-HR CBC Programme (Priority Axis 1 – Blue innovation)
Project budget: € 2.060.000 (ERDF+national co-financing)
Programme co-financing: € 1.751.000 (ERDF)
Start date: 01 January 2019
End date: 28 February 2021
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