Planning for citizen participation in the EU mission to restore our ocean and waters by 2030

21 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, supplementary information https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-024-00385-x.-- Data availability: Data ownership is shared between PREP4BLUE consortium partners and therefore is not available for sharing

The European Commission’s Mission to “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030” (Mission Ocean & Waters) is, at the most superficial level, an overarching policy framework with the primary aim of improving the health of European ocean, sea, and freshwater ecosystems. However, its use of the Mission framing and emphasis on fostering social, political, and economic transformations through its activities makes it a much more holistic and ambitious undertaking. This article explores challenges and opportunities that arise with the emphasis placed on increasing citizen participation in Mission Ocean & Waters, in the context of “Post-Normal Science” (Funtowicz & Ravetz Funtowicz and Ravetz, Krimsky and Golding (eds), Social Theories of Risk, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1992). We begin with a description of Mission Ocean & Waters, discussing its citizen engagement ambitions through the lens of Post-Normal Science, before describing the research methods used by the Horizon Europe project Preparing the Research and Innovation Core for Mission Oceans, Seas, & Waters (PREP4BLUE). We then present our results, highlighting four citizen engagement-based challenges that the Mission faces, and how PREP4BLUE has engaged with them. Finally, we discuss the future activities or structural changes that will be required if the Mission’s citizen engagement targets are to be achieved and for citizens to become core actors in protecting European aquatic ecosystems and developing a sustainable blue economy. These insights should prove useful to those developing and delivering Mission projects and those researching citizen participation in ocean and freshwater related challenges

The authors declare that the research for this article was funded by the European Union, through its Horizon Europe Program, Grant Number 101056957 (PREP4BLUE)

With the institutional support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)

Peer reviewed