Blue Communities
Building capacity for sustainable interactions with marine ecosystems for the benefit of coastal communities in Southeast Asia

Virtual meeting: 15–22 July 2020, 08:30–11:30 (GMT)
Researchers and local representatives from across the world will gather virtually this week to discuss some of the major challenges facing coastal communities and the various aspects of policy, planning and management required to support sustainable marine ecosystems.
The Annual Meeting was originally to be held in Hoi An, Vietnam, but following cancellation due to COVID-19, it will now be hosted online by the University of Plymouth with an adapted agenda of talks, workshops and debates. It will be the first to feature stakeholders in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, where the programme’s research projects are taking place.
Blue Communities includes 12 underpinning and interrelated research projects that, in conjunction with coastal community stakeholders, are helping to develop knowledge on the impacts and opportunities of overfishing/sustainable fishing, rising tourism, renewable energy, climate change, coastal area management, rising populations, economic improvement and transport.
A key emphasis of the programme is on close collaboration with local researchers to build research capability that will support and underpin stakeholders and their decisions on marine spatial planning for the sustainable management of marine ecosystems. All of the projects share data and findings, and it is hoped they will also be able to extend the projects to other communities that suffer from similar challenges.