Maritime spatial planning and land-sea interactions

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Europe’s seas have become important in terms of policy making on both European and national level. The exploitation of seas and coastal areas for economic purposes is becoming increasingly important, but there are also growing concerns on environmental issues. Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is an increasingly important field of policy aiming at reconciling different demands on the marine space. Under the EU Directive on MSP, Member States both need to develop their own MSP policies and cooperate on these issues. In addition, they will use their plans to contribute to promoting the sustainable development and growth of maritime and coastal economies and the sustainable use of marine and coastal resources. MSP is identified by the EU’s Integrated Maritime Policy as a cross-cutting policy tool enabling public authorities and stakeholders to apply a coordinated, integrated and trans-boundary approach to marine development.To ensure that maritime activities can deliver growth and avoid sea-use conflicts, integrated planning of human activities both on land and at sea is needed. MSP can increase coordination between administrations, while enhancing cross-border cooperation and investments by identifying the possible impacts of and opportunities for multiple uses of space. For this purpose, MSP needs territorial evidence. Most development and use, which takes place in the marine environment also has an onshore component or impact. Alignment between maritime and terrestrial spatial planning is important and should be achieved through consistency of policies, plans and decisions. Land-sea interaction (LSI) is also highly related to the economic benefits of MSP and the importance of given maritime uses covered by the MSP for the economic development of the region in question. The stakeholders involved in this targeted analysis have identified a potential opportunity to improve their planning processes through the coordinated, comparable and systematic acquisition and analysis of both marine and terrestrial data and information at regional level (NUTS 2 or NUTS 3, for the marine realm possibly also in alternative systems, e.g. grid based statistical classes). Such an approach would not only bring significant efficiencies in collecting, collating and analysing relevant social, economic and environmental data, but would also improve the understanding of wider regional level interactions. The territorial evidence that will be produced within this targeted analysis will be useful for all Member States dealing with the implementation of the above-mentioned EU Directive and with MSP itself. The benefits of having useful data for MSP can help increase cross-border cooperation between EU countries (on cables, pipelines, shipping lanes, wind installations) and also increase coordination between administrations in each country through the use of a single instrument to balance the development of a range of maritime activities.

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