Land-sea interactions advancing Blue Growth in Baltic Sea coastal areas

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Coastal municipalities can be affected by new developments in the Baltic Sea, but their interests are not always taken into account in maritime spatial plans. Furthermore, new uses such as marine aquaculture or wind energy generation can conflict with traditional sea activities like fishing, tourism and leisure. The project Land-Sea-Act wants to explore better governance practices to balance local communities’ and small scale businesses’ interests with large scale development and investment interests in maritime spatial planning. Blue Growth challenges: Integrated planning in marine areas and on land is often not coherent. This coherence is a key challenge and at the same time – precondition for Blue Growth. Another challenge is to recognize the relationships and inter-dependencies between marine ecosystems, landscapes, social and cultural values and economic sectors by taking into account interactions between land and sea. Working together to improve coastal management: The project guides national, regional and local authorities, as well as stakeholders of various sectors to improve transnational cooperation and facilitate knowledge exchange to foster Blue Growth; to raise awareness, knowledge and skills to enhance Blue Growth initiatives and integrated development in coastal areas; and to balance the development of new sea uses with coastal community interests by improving coastal governance. In demonstration cases the project partners and involved stakeholders closely collaborate to explore and recommend new flexible governance practices for coastal management. The project activities lead to additional knowledge and improved skills to solve common land-sea interaction challenges. Project results: The main result of this project is a multi-level governance agenda on blue growth and spatial planning in the Baltic Sea region. The project also provides various reports and guiding documents for stakeholders of transnational organisations, national authorities, municipalities, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

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