Smart Specialisation in the Context of Blue Economy – Analysis of Desalination Sector

The smart Specialisation strategy design and implementation offer to the territories in Europe a solid paradigm for developing effective innovation governance, improving innovation policy capacities, enhancing public-private partnerships, offering common platform for inter-regional cooperation activities and through that an operative engagement of stakeholders in the international value chains. The sustainable Smart Specialisation strategies framework can play a key role as enabler of a sustainable transformation of European economy towards the Green Deal by streamlining innovation activities around the value chains to reach the competitiveness edge of Europe vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The Blue Economy activities, by safeguarding the preservation of healthy oceans, seas and waters, represent an important component of the European Green Deal activities in the regions and Member States. One of the emerging blue economy sectors with considerable “greening” potential for a stable water supply in the ever growing areas with increasing water imbalances is the desalination sector. Besides its essential role in providing water in the areas suffering water shortages, lately seriously aggravated by the climate change impacts, the sector has a potential for creating of prosperity and employment in some territories of Europe through a combination of innovation based sustainable water, energy and chemical technologies, coupled with environmental and societal challenges. This report aims at analysing the sector from the innovation, the EU policy and regional perspectives - in the latter with examples of implementation of desalination technologies in the three types of regions with specific water supply issues across Europe, namely in the water scarce regions of the Southern Europe, in European Western and Northern regions, and in the specific case of island regions, where a stable water supply through desalination improves substantially the living conditions and local economy. Overall, the desalination sector provides a sustainable solution for agro-food systems and for integrated water provision and management in the water scarce areas, makes those often vulnerable territories more climate-resilient, efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally and socially sustainable, and contributes to climate adaptation by solving the water scarcity, food security, soil health by enhancing rainwater infiltration and water reuse, nutrition, health and well-being of population in these areas. Given the increasing climate change pressures, a holistic approach to address the global freshwater scarcity through sustainable innovative solutions is needed and the sector of desalination will be granted increasing protagonism in the endeavours to enhance territorial resilience, improve ecosystem services, biodiversity and a more sustainable agricultural production in Europe and beyond.