Partnerships Involving Stakeholders in the Celtic Sea Ecosystem

PISCES aimed to improve implementation of European marine policy through multi-sector collaboration. PISCES was an innovative three and half year project (2009-2012) that created a unique partnership of sea-users from the UK, Ireland, France and Spain to jointly explore ways of governing and managing activities in the Celtic Sea more sustainably. An important driver for the project was the ‘ecosystem approach’, which is proposed as a solution to address unsustainable and uncoordinated resource use and is a central principle in EU marine policy. PISCES focused on seeking ways to help improve stakeholder participation in marine policy and management, as both a key principle of the ecosystem approach and an important component of a stakeholder-led project. To help support this, PISCES also explored ways of improving engagement between sea-users and between sea-users and government at the trans-boundary or regional level.

Project partners:

• WWF-UK - Lead partner (UK)
• WWF-Spain (ES)
• Environment Council (UK)
• Seaweb (FR)
• University College Cork (IE)

Sub-contractors:

• Coastal and Marine Research Centre (IE)
• SeaWeb (FR)