The Blue Ports initiative to encourage positive city–port relationships

The Blue Ports initiative by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) enables commercial and fishing ports to enhance their blue credentials and promote sustainable development in their regions. The quality of city-port relations is one of the key issues that ports are required to address as part of the initiative. What are the challenges for a port that aspires to be “Blue”, and how can they be overcome through this initiative? José Estors Carballo (FAO) explains. @ FAO Jose Estors CarballoFishery Officer NFIMV, FAO FAO´s Strategic Framework 2022–2031 seeks to “support the 2030 Agenda through the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind.” The “four betters” of the Strategic Framework reflect the interconnected economic, social and environmental dimensions of agri-food systems. FAO also applies four cross-cutting “accelerators”, namely technology, innovation, data and complements (governance, human capital and institutions) in all its programmatic interventions, with the goal to accelerate impact while minimizing trade-offs. The Blue Ports initiative responds to FAO’s four betters and accelerators by approaching marine ports as knowledge hubs, where many activities take place that have a direct influence on people’s lives. This approach allows ports to become a source of value on which operational strategies for local development can be based. Vigo, Spain @ FAO To date, the blue economy approach has been presented as a strategy to enhance the “triple bottom line” of fishing and commercial ports. This includes preserving the environment (e.g. reducing pollution), fostering social benefits (e.g. decent and fair labour) and promoting economic growth (e.g. sustained profits). The fishing value chain is linked to fishing ports, loaders, customs, retailers, the processing industry, ship owners, the ship building industry, etc. and these activities in turn are related to legal and regulatory affairs (e.g. sanitary and customs regulations) as well as to environmental issues, such as marine resources and/or carbon footprint management. In addition, labour, gender equality…