The Pampa Azul Initiative and its role in Argentina's maritime and bicontinental projection

The Pampa Azul Initiative (IPA) is an ambitious interministerial program created in 2014 to place the Argentine Sea at the center of the country & rsquo;s development agenda. We proposed coordinating the essential national scientific-technological resources for sustainable, sovereign, and safe development of the sea. It is a strategic commitment to the sovereignty conflict with the United Kingdom over the maritime and insular territories surrounding the Malvinas islands and the growing geopolitical dispute over the South Atlantic and Antarctica. The role that the IPA could play in Argentina's maritime, southern insular, and bicontinental projection is addressed here, analyzing its main guidelines, performance, and strategic implications. This essay ends by posing a set of future challenges linked to articulating state, institutional, industrial, and techno-scientific capacities; epistemological approaches and science-policy-society interface; territorial awareness and new national strategic identity.