About Nora

NORA Action Plan for 2024

Nordic Atlantic Cooperation (NORA) contributes to green, competitive and socially sustainable development in the North Atlantic by stimulating and initiating co-operation between relevant stakeholders in the North Atlantic part of the Nordic region. NORA supports the regional sector’s Vision 2030 action plan. NORA’s strategic programme for 2021–2024 reaffirms that NORA is a project-supporting, agenda-setting and alliance-creating organisation, and the strategy identifies the thematic priorities our partnerships.

NORA’s Action Plan identifies and specifies activities to be held in 2024 that will further realisation of the strategy. This is the fourth Action Plan in the current strategy period. Norway holds the leadership of NORA in 2024. As one of its focus areas, it has chosen the Nordic Council of Ministers’ ambition of making the Nordic region the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030. Its emphasis is chiefly on programmes for young people; management of the NORA area’s contributions to world heritage; collaboration with Bodø, Norway, during its year as a European Capital of Culture in 2024; and collaboration with the Nordic region’s western neighbours. The current process of developing a new strategy for the Nordic Council of Ministers will be followed and the results incorporated into the development of NORA’s 2025-2029 strategy.  

NORA will incorporate the positive results of its 2023 evaluation into the narrative it tells about itself and highlight them when relevant.

1. Two Application Rounds

Grants to projects are an important tool for NORA to achieve the objectives of the strategy and the regional sector’s Vision 2030 action plan. The grant-receiving projects are an important part of NORA’s network in the region. The 2024 application deadlines fall in early March and early October. NORA will conduct two webinars (one in Scandinavian and one in English) for potential applicants well in advance of the deadlines.

2. Blue bioeconomy and young people

NORA will hold the North Atlantic Youth Blue Innovation Camp in Vestmanneyjar in the spring of 2024. The event carries over from the action plan published in 2023 under Iceland’s leadership of NORA. The event will gather young people from coastal communities who are involved in a project or have an idea relating to coastal resilience, sustainable tourism or food from the sea and give them the opportunity to meet potential mentors.

3. Implementing the recommendations of the Unesco sites conference

NORA’s March 2023 conference, Unesco sites in a regional sustainable development perspective, dealt with how communities can benefit from a Unesco designation as a world-heritage site, geopark or biosphere reserve, all of which can be drivers of local sustainable development. The conference, held in Sisimiut, Greenland, was a success and led to the establishment of a network of enthusiastic stakeholders. A Sisimiut 2 conference will be held in Québec in October. NORA will lend its support to the network and work to have the Nordic region declared as a single biosphere, giving the Nordic Council of Ministers a strategic instrument towards achieving its Vision 2030 goals.

4. Co-operation with the Nordic region’s western neighbours

Co-operation with the Nordic region’s western neighbours will again be part of the action plan in 2024, continuing a long-standing focus for NORA and the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Scotland: NORA and the Orkney Islands Council signed a memorandum of agreement in 2023, and, in 2024, the process of establishing closer contact with the various regions of Scotland will continue. We are focused on involving Scottish stakeholders, backed by funding from the Orkney Islands Council, in NORA projects. NORA is looking towards establishing relationships with other parts of Scotland, specifically Shetland and the Hebrides. We will stage an information campaign in connection with Faroese flag day on 25 April. Previously, the UK celebration has been held in London but will in 2024 be held in Edinburgh, in the hopes this will create greater synergies and allow for political representation and thus serve as a better platform for spreading NORA’s message.

Canada: The province of Québec is a partner in the world-heritage project, which NORA will continue to lend its support to (see above).

Maine: NORA has re-established contact with the Maine International Trade Center (MITC). MITC has expressed an interest in working with NORA, but the form and extent of this collaboration remains a matter of discussion.

5. NORA youth initiatives

In continuation of the 2023 Action Plan’s youth-oriented activities[1], and, after consulting with the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy, NORA will work towards implementing some of the recommendations put forward in September by the 2023 Nordic Youth Panel to the region’s ministers for Nordic co-operation.

Furthermore, NORA has signed on to a planned partnership with the Icelandic Ocean Cluster that will result in the establishment of an accelerator programme for young entrepreneurs working with blue bioeconomy. The initiative will build on the results of the Vestmanneyjar event.

6. North Atlantic Coastal Culture / cooking competition

The final project of the North Atlantic Development Strategy (NAUST)[2] will be a NORA-organised cooking competition among young Nordic gastronomes and food connoisseurs. The focus of the event will be local ingredients and local gastronomy. The plan calls for local competitions to be held, with the winners going on to a final competition held as a Bodø24 European Capital of Culture event tentatively to be attended / promoted by Norwegian lawmakers.

7. Maritime transport

Work to establish a network of maritime-education centres continues, now under the leadership of Vinnuháskúlin (the Faroese centre for maritime studies and engineering). The purpose of the network is to ensure that tomorrow’s officers are informed about the green transition in the maritime industry.

8. Artificial intelligence and regional development

NORA will study how artificial intelligence can be used in the development of remote areas. AI has the potential to contribute to regional development in a number of ways.

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[1] NORA seeks to involve young people in all our initiatives, while also holding events specifically for young people. NORA will support networking among young people in the NORA area through initiatives such as support for participation in youth projects, events and initiatives that can help create useful networks. The aims are to: 1) connect existing local initiatives and networks and involve participants from throughout the region; 2) create fora where young people can exercise real influence on decisions made by local, regional and national authorities; and 3) catalogue the youth organisations and networks in the region.

[2] The purpose of NAUST is to deepen the Nordic co-operation programme for regional-development and planning. It is the knowledge base for further development in the NORA area, which encompasses the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland and coastal Norway. The strategy is based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and guides co-operation in the North Atlantic.