MARLISCO meets to take stock of progress and look ahead to next steps

Representatives of 19 partners of MARLISCO, advisory panel and the European Commission were brought together to take stock of the progress made and fine-tune the project's next steps, at a meeting held in Brussels from the 5th to 6th of February 2014. The meeting was co-organized by Province of Teramo and PlasticsEurope. Opening remarks were made by Mr. Antonio Scarafino, Project Officer at the EC DG Research & Innovation, followed by an overview of the project implementation made by the Lead Partner - Province of Teramo.

The first day of the meeting was dedicated to reviewing the main achievements, outcomes and results produced within the first 18 months:

  the scoping study on sources and trends of marine litter, policy background and monitoring aspects led by CEFAS and which resulted in 3 reports now available.

  the results of the stakeholder survey conducted in 16 countries and involving 3748 respondents, led by Plymouth University, which provides a baseline on how people perceive the problem of marine litter, its impacts and where responsibilities lie,

 the data-base of good practices collected around Europe on prevention and mitigation of marine litter, which is now available on the web-portal.

National partners presented the activities being implemented in the 15 coastal countries (DE, DK, IE, UK, NL, FR, PT, ES, IT, SI, CY, GR, RO, BG, TK), namely the launch of the video competition for youngsters (led by EUCC), the MARLISCO exhibition in the national languages (led by MIO-ECSDE) and several interesting educational and awareness raising events organised in these countries.

The video contest is being a success, with a total of120schools directly supported by MARLISCO and over 300 videos expected. From mid February until mid March, the best videos in each country will undergo Jury selected and public scrutiny (MARLISCO Youtube channel) and a final compilation film produced to be presented at the European Maritime Days Ceremony, on the 19th May, in Bremen (Germany).

Within the educational component of MARLISCO, the educational pack and the Serious Game are being finalised and will soon be available in several European languages. The training of trainers events are being defined and will be carried by MIO-ECSDE), while the national exhibitions are on-going.

During the second dayof the meeting, Leo de Vrees (DG Env officer) set the scene in terms of what is being done at the European level, which was later complemented by presentations about the work being done within the Regional Sea Conventions (with representatives from OSPAR, HELCOM, Barcelona Convention and the Bucharest Convention) and the identification of potential synergies with MARLISCO.

The second half of the day focused on the WP 4 National Forum planning and implementation (by NUIC-UCC). Each national forum will discuss the current scientific, technological and societal positions with respect to marine litter and bring together the relevant stakeholders to consider how to address the current marine litter problems. A forum simulation was carried out by the WP4 leader Tom Doyle together with experts and MARLISCO partners. The first forum will be held on the 2nd April 2014 in Dublin by the Irish national partner UCC. An updated calendar of each forum will be published on the Marlisco website soon.

The results presented during the progress meeting were much appreciated by both the European Commission referee and the Advisory Panel members, who renewed their support to the project.

Read more about the project results.