site.btaThe University of Thessaloniki Is Actively Involved in Projects in the Black Sea Basin

Although Greece is not a Black Sea country, it is part of the INTERREG programme for the Black Sea Basin. This is due to its experience as a maritime country, which makes it a valuable partner on a number of topics such as maritime spatial planning, mapping, and the fight against pollution. Greece also has a longer experience in European programmes compared to other countries in the region, which is an advantage that was particularly strong at the beginning of the history of European territorial cooperation programmes.

The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki maintains intensive relations with the Black Sea region, which is no coincidence, as Thessaloniki is geographically and historically connected not only to nearby countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, but also, due to various migration movements over the last century, to the Black Sea Basin.

One of the projects in which the university is involved is called MARMAPS, which is funded by the Black Sea INTERREG programme and is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, Professor Antonios Mazaris from the Department of Biology told BTA. He noted that four partner organizations participating, which are the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, collaborators from the Ukrainian Environmental Service, and an NGO from Romania, with the leading partner and coordinator being the branch of the Black Sea NGO Network in the Bulgarian city of Varna (on the Black Sea).

The project aims to develop an open portfolio of information resources that will support spatial planning in the Black Sea. “A very large number of countries around the world, 197 in total, have signed the Convention on the Protection of Biological Diversity, which has specific goals. Now we have the goals for 2030, among which is the goal of protecting 30% of the terrestrial, coastal and marine areas of our countries, Mazaris emphasized.

He commented that meanwhile, there is a strategy of the European Union that aims for the same thing, as all member states must have designated protected areas for 30% of their surface at sea and on land by 2030, 10% of which must be strictly protected.

The aim of the project is to develop a spatial planning of the Black Sea Basin using the most modern scientific tools in order to identify the areas that should be placed under protection, while maximizing the effect of their protection and minimizing its conflict with the different forms of use of marine resources.

Mazaris pointed out that the project tries to involve users and interested organizations and provide a number of tools such as monitoring manuals, guidelines on how they can implement citizen science programmes to collect valuable information quickly and easily, while at the same time having the facilitation through common monitoring protocols that follow international models and serve the needs of EU directives, so that there is a structured way in which they collect data and analyze it.

Another Black Sea project also under development is called Response. The lead partner is the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with partners from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Georgia. Mazaris noted that the aim of the project is to find a response to marine pollution with a specific focus on pollution caused by armed conflicts, given the current situation created by the war in Ukraine.

“One of the main results of this project will be a tool that will allow a wide range of users in a given service, ministry, even a university or school, to be able to prepare an educational programme with relative ease that addresses very specific topics related to marine pollution,” Mazaris emphasized.

One of the main objectives of the Response project is to provide tailored training curricula to key services and organizations, which will be updated regularly over a long period of time.

“What the project is trying to do is, first, to understand where we are in the Black Sea in terms of training and knowledge reaching the services responsible for pollution. The second is to see what difficulties the different institutions have in providing information to their employees", Mazaris said, adding that another aspect is to understand exactly where this information should be focused, whether on chemical pollutants, whether on plastics, whether on oil spills. "We have many different types of pollutants,” he commented.

Asked about the sustainability of the project after the end of its funding, Mazaris pointed out that within the framework of the project, a mapping of all interested institutions in the region was carried out and meetings were organized between them at different levels. As a result their real needs were identified. "Sustainability is ensured by the fact that we did not make the project as some kind of scientific game or experiment, but as a tool for which there is a real need and the possibility of use by specific users," he concluded.