00:00The blue economy affects all of us.
00:02We as human beings, we are depending on a sustainable and also competitive economy,
00:09particularly also here in Europe.
00:11The ocean, coastal regions, the marine realm provide a huge opportunity,
00:16it has a lot to offer, but of course we are also very aware
00:19that we are talking about a very fragile, very valuable
00:23and also vastly unknown realm and ecosystem, the ocean ecosystem.
00:30Globally, there is a very recent OECD report on the blue economy
00:36and this report actually states that if we were thinking about the ocean as a country,
00:42it would be the fifth largest economy on earth.
00:46Altogether, it provides about 3% to the gross value added of the economy
00:54and this figure is roughly speaking similar for the European Union.
00:59Of course, then it depends a lot on which sector you are looking at.
01:03We are also talking about so-called established sectors, that is fisheries,
01:08that is maritime transport, offshore wind energy, for example,
01:12and then really new emerging sectors like, for example, biotechnology, robotics.
01:19And there is a big effort to take salt water, seawater and transform it into freshwater desalination.
01:25And that is very interesting not only because it is really an alternative source of freshwater for irrigation purposes,
01:32for example, for agriculture which is very water dependent,
01:35but also it is linked actually to the need of energy.
01:38It is very energy hungry.
01:40So we are also analysing, looking to what extent can this be coupled to photovoltaic energy, renewable energy basically.
01:47They have about 4 to 5 million people working for the blue economy in Europe.
01:57It has a substantial contribution also to the GDA.
02:00But what is also very interesting, we see a growth overall in the blue economy.
02:05And that is of course in the current economic situation very important.
02:10It also shows that we have really the opportunity to help Europe taking advantage of blue economy opportunities
02:18to become more competitive and to grow.
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