Fisheries in the Maritime Spatial Planning context | The European Maritime Spatial Planning Platform

Abstract:

This report investigates the possible opportunities and suitability of using spatial planning to prepare regulations in fisheries management, analyses the current legal situation and provides samples of proposed regulations to be included in MSPs.

Sea Basin(s):

Baltic Sea

Country:

Estonia

Latvia

Application in MSP:

Applied in an MSP process

Type of Issue:

Coexistence of uses

Economic aspects

Type of practice:

Study

Stage of MSP cycle:

Analyse spatial aspects

Develop and implement plan

Cross-border / trans-national aspect:

Yes

Coherence with other processes:

Common Fisheries Policy

Key words:

regulations on how to integrate fishery in MSP

Source / Links:

Disclaimer: Please note that this link relates to a 3rd party website which is no longer available. However the general information available on this page remains valid.

Questions this practice may help answer

Do fisheries pose spatial claims? How do they interact with other sea uses?
Is it necessary to establish spatial planning regulations for fisheries?
How can fisheries be integrated into maritime spatial planning?

Implementation Context

The “Fisheries in the MSP context” report was developed within the context of the BaltSeaPlan project and it builds on work done as part of the same project, as well as other projects like BALANCE and PlanBothnia.

Aspects / Objectives

This report seeks to:

Prove that integrating fisheries into maritime spatial planning is both possible and advisable
Highlight the data gaps and the lack of methodological experience and legal framework necessary for the sector to be integrated into MSP
Present options for fully integrating fisheries into maritime spatial planning

Method

A working group consisting of BaltSeaPlan partners and coordinated by WWF was set up in order to identify the problems relating to the integration of fisheries into the system of MSP. The group agreed that fisheries should be included in all phases of the project and contribute to key outputs. This decision is reflected in many BaltSeaPlan reports, including BaltSeaPlan report 23, which proposes ways of introducing fisheries management into the legal framework for spatial planning. It is also evident in most of the MSP pilot plans produced by BaltSeaPlan, as well as in the BaltSeaPlan Vision 2030, which considers fisheries as one of the four key topics to be dealt with at transnational level. This report assembles the results of all the fisheries-related work done within the context of BaltSeaPlan, as well as of previous projects that took up the case of fisheries in sea use planning context, like BALANCE and PlanBothnia.

Main Outputs / Results

BaltSeaPlan Report No 26 "Fisheries in the MSP context".

Transferability

The "Fisheries in the MSP context" report draws mainly from experience on the Baltic Sea Region, but the recommendations are applicable to any sea basin.