Stakeholders’ engagement – the heart of the Land-Sea Project

The year 2017 was crowned for the Land-Sea Project partners with a huge variety of events.
Apart from the Interregional Conference PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP FOR PREVENTING AND SOLVING NEURALGIC THREATS FOR THE ECO-TOURISM DEVELOPMENT which was considered a huge success, all partners conducted local stakeholder group meetings.
- In Italy stakeholders representatives from Regione Molise and the Authority of the Basin of the Liri, Garigliano and Volturno Rivers discussed the efforts done so far in the 4 municipalities and other organizations from the region in developing coastal management strategies, for the need to develop tourism in new directions, encouraging the ability of tourists to spend, the resilience of welcoming environment and the seasonality of employment. The Land-Sea Project has a potential of a “trigger” for changing the gear on a technical and structural level for the municipalities from the Molise Region. The need to use the expert help and support of the Land-Sea Project has been underlined.
- In Barcelona the Land-Sea project development for 2017 was evaluated. The issues of the territorial policies have been discussed among the local stakeholders as well. There have been visits conducted, focused on the planning and the future drafting of the territorial sectoral plans. The rich experience of Catalonia in the elaboration of all kind of regulations related to environmental management has to be considered as a valuable support for all project partners.
- In Hamburg the stakeholder group met for the first time. Hamburg Tourismus GmbH, Waelderhaus, HafenCity University Hamburg, Port of Hamburg Marketing, Helmholtz Center Geesthacht Institute for coastal research, Hamburg University of applied sciences discussed the valuable opportunity this project gives to the City of Hamburg for reforming the Climate protection plan. Main focus for Hamburg would be to combine the topics of tourism and coastal protection as the City already has a lot of projects concerning one or the other topic and how would that be possible in the frame of Land-Sea. A combination of these two topics has not been attempted yet. The most important point wpuld be to find a way of coastal protection without blocking access for the tourists to the local areas.
- In Varna, Bulgaria the stakeholders from Regional Inspectorate for Environment and Water protection, Regional Basin Directorate Varna, private companies and members of Tourism Branch NGOs discussed upon the possible ways for preventing landslides and coastal erosion in order not to threaten the ecotourism potential of the Region and the analyses that have been done so far in order to outline future efforts.