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Energy, Climate change, Environment

EU China Blue Year sees strong collaboration with EMODnet

News article |

In the context of the EU China Blue Year, last week  EMODnet welcomed the EU-Chinese delegation to Bruges.

The meetings timing provided an opportune moment to present the new Phase III work that is currently underway and to showcase the major outcome of the February Sea-basin Checkpoints conference. The European Marine Board were also present and presented a forthcoming policy brief on ‘Decommissioning of offshore artificial structures: taking an ecosystem approach’ and highlighted that they had used EMODnet Human Activities to obtain a map of oil & gas installations in the North Sea (see below).

The meeting was a great opportunity to discuss the status of marine science and data in Europe and China and it ended with a discussion of possible areas for closer cooperation with China during the EU-China Blue Year and beyond. It was agreed that a dedicated follow-up meeting will take place later this summer to discuss various points of common interest in more detail. Relevant to EMODnet, these include, among others, data standards and user friendliness and data to support maritime spatial planning as well as future observing needs.

EU-China Blue Year was launched in July of last year during the 18th bilateral summit between the EU and China, where representatives of the two countries came together to discuss political and economic relations, as well as global and regional issues, including the future of the seas and oceans. EU-China Blue Year will boost cooperation in marine areas and facilitate exchanges of personnel and this first meeting was a good starting point.

A copy of the agenda and the presentations that took place during the meeting are available here.