Category: Uncategorized

Beyond Single-Use Zoning?: MSPRN Webinar on Multi-Use in Marine Spatial Planning

What is the future of marine spatial planning? Will marine plans continue to rely on zoning as a primary means for coordinating the spatial distribution of human activities at sea? Will marine protected areas continue to work with fixed and static boundaries? Multiple-use and co-location are increasingly viewed as core principles for the efficient use of marine space and actively supported both at European level and through multiple funded research and pilot projects . To take one example, the long-term vision of the 2019 Belgian marine spatial plan states that “in the future, the principle of multiple-use of space will be the norm for all use of space within the Belgian North Sea”.

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Ecosystem-Based Marine Spatial Planning for the Dogger Bank

As part of my teaching at Leuphana University Lüneburg, I gave a seminar in Winter Semester 22/23 on ‘Spatial Planning in Practice’ with a particular focus on ecosystem-based marine spatial planning. The seminar formed part of the minor programme in Spatial Science. The interdisciplinary group of undergraduate students brought their own perspectives and skills to the complex task of preparing an ecosystem-based transboundary marine spatial plan for the Dogger Bank area of the North Sea. The students initially worked in small groups focussed on thematic issues of relevance to the case study area, including offshore wind, shipping, fishing, marine mammals and birds.

Students discussing planning options for the Dogger Bank, bringing together diverse stakeholder perspectives.

Mapping fishing grounds at the Dogger Bank

The groups identified objectives for their area of focus for both 2030 and 2060 as well as potential planning measures targeted at achieving those objectives. In a subsequent step, the students exchanged information between the groups and engaged in negotiation with the aim of achieving common objectives, balancing the expansion of offshore renewable energy with protection of the marine environment and against the background of existing uses of marine space.

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Crossing Borders and Blending Perspectives at the Wadden Sea

Poring over a map of the Wadden Sea, Rømø

In September 2022, I co-led a week-long international fieldtrip to the Wadden Sea coast at the border of northern Germany and southern Denmark. The fieldtrip was one part of a wider TriWadWalk partnership including universities in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. In May 2022, a first field trip took place, with a group of staff and students exploring the Wadden Sea coast and islands at the Dutch-German border. Both excursions were unusual for including a balance of staff and students (approximately 10 and 10) with emphasis placed on international exchange, interdisciplinary and intergenerational learning and the experience of being in and moving through ‘the field’. The staff came from the disciplines of geography, planning, tourism studies, anthropology, landscape architecture and environmental economics and are engaged to varying degrees in social science research at the Wadden Sea. The students brought a wider range of perspectives from their studies in both the environmental and social sciences. The fieldtrip developed from a longstanding collaboration between Wadden Sea researchers and educators at the universities of Bremen, Groningen, Hamburg, Lüneburg, Oldenburg and Southern Denmark and was generously supported by the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat, Wadden Academy, the Danish Wadden Sea National Park, and the University of Southern Denmark.

In the following, I provide a brief account of the week, informed by my own personal reflections. Where relevant, links to secondary sources for further information are provided.

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Assessing the environmental credentials of marine spatial plans in Europe

In accordance with the EU MSP directive all EU coastal member states were required to produce marine spatial plans by 2021. Not all have met this deadline but many are now published and adopted by national governments. A key requirement of the MSP directive is that marine spatial plans follow an ecosystem-based approach and contribute to the achievement of Good Environmental Status for marine ecosystems, as set out in the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Over the last nine months or so, I have been engaged in the evaluation of selected national-level marine spatial plans, with a view to assessing their degree of alignment with EU environmental legislation and policy objectives. This work has been commissioned by environmental NGOs: Birdlife International and the Irish umbrella NGO Sustainable Water Network (SWAN). In the following, I provide an overview of this work with links to the published reports.

Source: (C) Birdlife International
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Spatial Justice, Relational Values and Territorial Cohesion in Europe

In a scientific report commissioned by NUI Galway, Department of Geography (Dr. Marie Mahon) under the EU Horizon 2020 project IMAJINE: Integrative Mechanisms for Addressing Spatial Justice and Territorial Inequalities in Europe, I was tasked with exploring the relational qualities of spatial justice, together with Dr. Brendan O’ Keeffe. The report was written against the background of increased awareness of the fragility and vulnerability, but also, in some respects, the resilience of European solidarity in the face of external shocks such as the Greek Euro-crisis, the 2015 refugee crisis and the exit of the UK from the EU. Spatial justice is recognised as a fundamentally contested concept related to normative EU concepts of a Social Europe and the discourses of economic, social and territorial cohesion. More recently it is reflected, if partially, in the concept of a Just Transition in the context of the EU Green Deal.

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