Archived decisions

APPENDIX

"The Green Blue" is a joint venture by the British Marine Federation and the Royal Yachting Association which aims to promote the sustainable use of coastal and inland waters by watersports participants and the sustainable operation and development of the recreational marine industry.

The Green Blue aims to educate and inform its target audience about their environmental impacts, emphasising how they can avoid or minimise these impacts and promoting good practice through practical projects, training, research and visual materials.

This project will bring together the two major representative bodies that support and enable recreational boating. The British Marine Federation is the trade association for the marine leisure industries and has over 1,500 members with 19 group associations and 14 regions. The Royal Yachting Association has 100,000 members and over 1,500 affiliated clubs, which represent a further 500,000 boating enthusiasts.

The Green Blue has a wider scope than previous programmes and aims to engage with the target audiences in an interactive, varied and practical way. This project also seeks to engage a wide range of partners in the environmental, conservation and recreational marine sectors as well as coastal and inland managers in order to reach as wide an audience as possible.

The main environmental impacts of both industry and participants have already been identified but not quantified and as a result are largely ignored by the target audience.

The Green Blue will raise awareness and understanding of these impacts and will focus particularly on bringing about changes in behaviour amongst the target audience so that good environmental practice is widely adopted and so that more sustainable alternatives to current goods and services are produced and made available.

There are three main strands to the project:

· Research into identified impacts to determine the severity of these impacts around the country (these impacts have been prioritised)

· A series of practical projects which will reinforce key messages and will demonstrate the benefits of adopting a more sustainable approach - these will include the promotion of sustainable technologies and services

· An awareness raising and educational campaign to build the case for addressing environmental concerns and changing to more sustainable practices

The Green Blue will promote the fact that enjoyment of boating activities and watersports depends on a high quality water environment. The future of the industry therefore also depends on a healthy environment. This can only be achieved and protected through a collective effort from all sectors of the boating and watersports community.

Core funding for this project for three years has been secured via Defra's Environmental Action Fund and we are now actively seeking match funding.