All Tunis was present for the launch of the Blue Season! It must be said that the event is highly anticipated. It is currently highly advertised.

200 events, several diplomatic missions and international cooperation organizations, dozens of partners and sponsors and about fifty project ambassadors are hired to support the event whose main objective is to bring together initiatives or events highlighting the exceptional maritime potential of Tunisia.

The apotheosis will be in October, from the 4th to the 6th, around a Forum in Bizerte. The “Mediterranean Sea Forum” is intended to present the challenges of the sea in all its components and to become a major international meeting recurrent today lacking on the subject.


That said, and beyond this primer, what’s behind the project? What are its openings? What can it bring as answers to a Tunisia in need of model while the forces, gathered around the project The Blue Season, estimate that the sea is a potential, to see a treasure, not enough converted. Worse, what degree of awareness has Tunisia of its main wealth: the sea?

What is the blue economy?

If La Saison Bleue touches on the concept of the Bleu economy, we realize that today’s approach is to raise awareness and arouse curiosity. Through key words such as environment or ecology, it is mentioned that the sea already represents 8% of Tunisia’s GDP and could easily grow to 15% by creating jobs, prosperity and preserving the country’s natural resources. by rooting it in his region; the Mediterranean.

The main speakers and organizers of the event, widely promoted by the French ambassador to Tunisia, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, talk about tourism, transport, renewable energies, fishing, etc.

For the Belgian Gunter Pauli, at the origin of the concept of the blue economy, this one sends to the models of production of the ecosystems and the resilience. It focuses on social entrepreneurship, fostering environmentally conscious development through the restriction of carbon losses and emissions, low-cost productions that promote sustainable employment and growth; the blue economy is taking shape mainly with aquaculture, mariculture, port activities, coastal ecotourism, blue energy, marine bio-products and biotechnology.

To date, the introduction of this notion is taking its first steps in the world, in Africa, where there is mention of another Africa under the sea. The first steps of this project are being set up in Tunisia timidly but surely ! To date, the most important is the grouping around the question of the preservation of the environment and the awareness that is being put in place.

The charter of the Blue Season

The blue season has brought together many actors around the following charter:

Considering the 3000 years of maritime history that made the Phoenicians and Carthaginians one of the largest peoples of the sea of ​​the world;

Considering this exceptional heritage which today marks the 1,300 kilometers of Tunisian coastline, its ports, beaches and islands in the heart of the Mediterranean and at the most northern tip of the African continent;

Considering this coastline which has always opened Tunisia to the world and the world to Tunisia and which favors trade, tourism, exchange in the broadest sense, mobility;

Considering the geostrategic role of Tunisia on the Sicilian Channel, 150 kilometers from Europe, bordering the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean; considering the current major challenges and challenges of maritime trade and transport for Tunisia;

Considering the 8 million Tunisian citizens living and working near the coast and the 8 million tourists who each year visit the Tunisian coast; concerned about the quality of the meeting between inhabitants and visitors;

Considering the contribution of the blue economy in Tunisia, representing 12% of the GDP and generating more than 600,000 direct jobs, that it acts through the transport and the maritime trade, the fishing and the aquaculture, the tourism, the hotel and catering, boating, scientific research …;

Considering, however, the vulnerability of a natural heritage, weakened by population pressure, climate change, marine erosion, sea level rise, the most diverse industrial pollution and human behavior;

I commit myself, as Ambassador of the Blue Season, from June 15 to October 15, 2018

  • To help everyone aware of the economic, environmental, cultural and aesthetic value of the Tunisian seaboard; the importance of fauna and flora, coastal ecosystems
  • To ensure, where I could, respect for this coastline, coastal protected marine areas, responsible fishing and the preservation of natural resources, biodiversity, water quality and clean beaches, but also town planning and spatial planning;
  • To promote as much as necessary the protection of the marine environment, the preservation of coastal cultural traditions, craftsmanship, ancient fishing techniques such as traditional housing, archaeological sites, festivals and festivals;
  • To take all initiatives, during the Blue Season, to awaken the awareness of the resource as maritime fragility to all those who live or stay on the Tunisian coast;
  • To contribute to the associative, entrepreneurial, scientific, economic, educational, national and international scale, to the protection of the planet Sea.

For more information: http://lasaisonbleue.tn/presentation

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