The growing interest in the potential of a sustainable blue economy in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden (RSGA) region requires a long-term and cooperative approach for addressing the current and potential future threats to the marine ecosystem, and reversing the losses of marine ecosystem services that underpin local and national economies.

The relatively healthy state of marine habitats in the Red Sea represents an abundant “blue natural capital” resource for the region. The term “blue natural capital” defines the three marine ecosystems (coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds) in terms of the ecosystem services that result from their functional integrity. Hence, preserving current states and restoring natural ecosystems represents an investment in blue natural capital.

Blue economy has broadly focused on promoting sustainable socioeconomic activities that occur in the marine environment and/or generate income and livelihood benefits based on consumption or outputs from the marine environment. The RSGA region has rightly identified the opportunities of the blue economy to help address national socio-economic issues including food security, poverty alleviation, economic diversification and sustainable management of living aquatic resources. Realising the blue economy opportunities in the RSGA region will rely heavily on sustainable and ecosystem-based approaches towards managing national and regional ocean based economic sectors. Underpinning the threats to sustainable economic benefits from marine resources and marine habitats in the RSGA region is the concept of blue economy.

Conserving and developing the RSGA’s valuable habitats offer windows of opportunities to position the region as a global investment hub and a potential leader of sustainable development. An important factor among all the action steps is that the development and allocation of marine and coastal spaces and resources should not lead to erosion of opportunities and rights of communities. At the same time, blue economy sectors that rely on ecosystem services should recognize the role of ecosystem services in sustainability and profitability of their investments, so would strategically adopt good and effective governance, and support conserved and healthy ecosystems for enhanced and sustainable flow of ecosystem services in the region.  Therefore, the proposed project aims to harness coastal and marine ecosystem services, and to transform its current coastal economic development into a Sustainable Blue Economy are fully justified. The main objective is fully commensurate with these aims, which focuses on improving delivery of marine and coastal ecosystem services, and accelerate transition to Sustainable Blue Economy.