Western Sweden has a long tradition of livelihoods and businesses connected to the sea. The pressure on the sea area has been and is increasing at the same time as the awareness of the development potential of new and traditional maritime businesses is increasing. Developing joint strategies is one way of handling this Blue Growth potential for the development to be sustainable.

The main task of this group of activities is to develop a regional maritime strategy for improved cooperation and innovative methods for sustainable development of coastal economies in the coastal area of Gothenburg, Sweden, namely the coastal areas of the municipalities Göteborg, Kungsbacka, Kungälv, Stenungsund, Tjörn, Öckerö, Orust and Uddevalla. The work will be carried out in collaboration with stakeholders on local and regional level.

The planned activities are:

• Baseline study of the existing business composition, including type of businesses and localisation.
• Development of potential study in co-creation workshops with municipality representative and business representatives.
• Trend analysis for business potential in the coastal zone.
• Workshops with business cluster representatives about new BG ideas.
• Create good tutorial for business development in coastal areas of BSR.

These activities will increase awareness about Blue Growth. A jointly developed maritime business plan will provide a framework that will help managing activity and help informing business investment and growth. The activities will create a clear linkage between national-regional-local administrative levels, both between spatial plans and between regional maritime business strategies and create opportunities for thriving and vivid coastal communities and contribute to a sustainable use of our common marine resources, taking into consideration ecological, economic and social dimensions. The recommendations for the Multi-level Governance Agenda on BG and Spatial Planning for BSR regional level management will be created to be used in drafting the agenda.

Officials from the eight municipalities, business representatives and The County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland will form regional working groups and will participate in the baseline study and in workshops. Business developers, planners and environmentalist will be involved in mapping, visualisations and scenario building. Initial ideas will be discussed in interactive meetings/workshops/seminars to co-create outputs and results.

The method, the strategy outline and the result will be disseminated and communicated to the project partnership. In next step a regional maritime business strategy can be implemented in each country as well as in the Baltic Sea Region as a whole.