Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership’s Joint Transnational Call

The Marine Institute is delighted to announce that the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership’s second joint transnational call “Unified paths to a climate-neutral, sustainable, and resilient blue economy: engaging civil society, academia, policy, and industry” with a deadline for pre-proposal submissions on 10 April 2024. 

This call is co-branded as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which is coordinated by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC/UNESCO) on behalf of the UN system, with the aim that the funded research and innovation projects are endorsed as Ocean Decade projects. 

The second Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) co-funded call pools national and regional financial resources of 40 million Euro through the participation of 38 funding organisations from 26 countries. The Marine Institute is the national funder for Ireland under this call with a commitment of €1 million. (Note: €1.5 million awarded to Irish partners under the first call in 2023).

The vision of the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership is to design, steer and support a just and inclusive transition to a regenerative, resilient, and sustainable blue economy. This EU Horizon Europe Partnership aims to boost the transformation needed towards a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive, and competitive blue economy by 2030 while creating and supporting the conditions for a sustainable ocean for the people by 2050.

Irish co-ordinators or partners in a consortium can apply under any of the four themes as follows:

(1) Digital Twins of the Ocean at regional sub basin scale 
(2) Blue economy sectors, development of marine multi-use infrastructures 
(3) Planning and managing sea-uses at the regional level  
(4) Blue Bioresources  

Proposal consortia must have at least three countries, with funding available for Irish partners being 300,000 Euro for Public Research Performing Organisations and 200,000 Euro for Industry/Private RPOs (minimum request 90,000 Euro per Irish partner) for three years (max of two Irish partners per proposal), which is being funded by the Marine Institute. A budget template for Irish partners is available from funding@marine.ie. The full call details including details of national guidelines for Irish partners are published on the SBEP website.
 
Applicants will have up to 10 April 2024 (15h CET) to submit their pre-proposals, via the online submission tool managed by the SBEP Call Secretariat.

An online webinar will be held on 15 February 2024 for potential applicants. The webinar will introduce the priority areas of the call and outline the process, evaluation criteria and selection process. Please register for this webinar at the link above.

Please email the Marine Institute’s Research Funding Office (funding@marine.ie) if you have any queries, and/or to confirm that you are submitting a proposal, quoting SBEP call in the subject title.