D5.6 Report with best practices for increasing the participation of citizens and ensure that existing knowledge outputs and new knowledge, co-designed and co-implemented with citizens will be implemented in the mission.

The EU Mission Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030 aims to restore the health of one of our most precious common goods: our ocean and waters. BlueMissionAA aims to build a coordination hub to support the Mission implementation in the Atlantic and Arctic Basin. BlueMissionAA will focus on preserving and restoring marine and coastal ecosystems and biodiversity for increase climate resilience. BlueMissionAA wants to engage and empower citizens to contribute to the Mission and boost society uptake of new solutions by performing a systematic and meaningful involvement of all relevant stakeholders. BlueMissionAA will develop capacity building activities that are designed and carried out to secure continuous citizen engagement throughout the project. These activities will follow well-known standards and best practices of the Citizen Science Community and will include bi-annual citizen assemblies and co-creation sessions and regular citizen science campaigns. This report will present a collection of best practices of knowledge transfer and citizen engagement. Knowledge transfer is the process of sharing tacit and technical knowledge and encapsulates more than simple information sharing. This also includes knowledge spill-over, the process whereby knowledge intentionally or unintentionally is shared among stakeholders which may utilise that knowledge to create innovative and resilient processes. This is particularly relevant in the current climate, where ongoing resource degradation, climate change effects, and the need for sustainable long-term solutions are ever present (Aldieri et al., 2022; Zhang et al., 2015).