The aim of the three-year project is to increase knowledge and skills at the local, regional and industry levels among the labour force engaged in Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) in the south Baltic Sea countries (Germany, Sweden, Poland and Lithuania). The project will assess the challenges that administrations are facing today in implementing MSP and develop a capacity building programme that will provide training on selected subjects within the framework of MSP. The project phases include assessment, development, and implementation of the MSP training. The University of Gdansk is the lead partner of the project. WMU will lead the Marine Governance Network work package that involves assessment of MSP training needs and partnering with the County Administrative Board of Kalmar, a strategic organisation involved in coordinating development of MSP in Sweden. Demand for marine goods and services, such as food, energy, and habitats, usually exceed the capacity of marine areas to meet all these competing demands. In many cases, users have free access to marine resources, including space that leads to excessive over use and eventual destruction of resources. Marine spatial planning is a public process of analysing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic and social objectives that have been specified through a political process.
Within the framework of SEPLANSPACE project WMU and the County Administrative Board inKalmar organised a series of seminar on MSP and the role of regional and local actors in MSP development. The purpose of the seminars was to provide municipalities and regional administrations in Sweden with information on different aspects of MSP including planning issues, the marine ecosystem and data management.
Four seminars were organized and focused on the following themes:
· Planning prerequisites in coastal and marine areas
· Information, data and modelling
· Prioritizations and trade offs
· Cooperation across municipal borders
Below are links to the presentations given during the seminars.
