Resident academic from the , Malta’s Ocean Ambassador, recently participated virtually on the 15th July 2020 within the third edition of the "" (Forum Mondial de la Mer – Bizerte) which was held under the theme “What about the sea in the world that comes after?” and which enjoyed a tight-knit cooperation with the European Commission.
The first two editions of this Forum, held in October 2018 and September 2019, brought together nearly three thousand participants dealing with major themes of the sustainable blue economy on a Euro-Mediterranean scale.
This year’s Forum was attended virtually by a total of twelve thousand participants and was chaired by Mr Pascal Lamy, Chair of the Horizon Europe Mission Healthy Oceans, Seas, Coastal and Inland Water. This edition also saw the launch of the "Club Bleu / Blue Club", the first international Think Tank fully dedicated to global maritime issues and made up of two hundred major personalities and protagonists in the maritime sector from all over the world.
Prof. Deidun, who is a member of the EU Commission’s Ocean Mission Board, was invited to moderate and to participate within Workshop 3: A clean, healthy and resilient Mediterranean.
His presentation focused on ongoing citizen science campaigns within the Maltese Islands (, , Spot the Alien) as well as ongoing initiatives by government and non-government entities to mitigate the plastic waste problem (e.g. Saving Our Blue campaign, Why Waste Waste?, the Single-Use Plastic Strategy issued recently by the ERA).
