Plan Bothnia Steaming Ahead

Pilot Project on Maritime Spatial Planning hosted a successful planning meeting at HELCOM Secretariat

 

Armed by maps, pens and transparent paper, the participants of the third Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) planning meeting filled the HELCOM office with creativity and enthusiasm. During the meeting between 19–20 October 2011 which was hosted by HELCOM Secretariat and Plan Bothnia project, over thirty participants from regional and national authorities in Sweden and Finland worked hands-on in groups divided according to the different activities taking place in the Bothnian Sea.

 

Plan Bothnia pilot project is a Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) “preparatory action” funded by EU Commission DG MARE and running until June 2012. The project, coordinated by the HELCOM Secretariat, will test ecosystem-based Maritime Spatial Planning in the offshore (baseline +1nm) Bothnian Sea as a transboundary case between Sweden and Finland.

 

In the October planning meeting, map and text materials on different human activities and natural features in the pilot project region had been pre-compiled and made available by the Plan Bothnia partners. This work contributed to finalising a set of interest maps for planning purposes. The final results will be made available through the project map service, as well as the Bothnian Sea MSP Assessment, which is to be submitted to EU Commission (DG MARE) by February 2012.

 

The final interest maps, along with the background maps on physical features and various sectoral targets and objectives, will be necessary materials for the process of drafting MSP plans before the end of 2011. The results will be submitted to the next MSP meeting which is planned for 25-26 January in Sweden.

 

The MSP 3 meeting in Helsinki provided for intensive discussions as well as new insights into the activities and interactions taking place in the Plan Bothnia area. Particularly many interactions seem to happen in the banks area in the South-West (Swedish waters), South-East part along the Finnish and Åland coast, as well as within the two Quarks in the northern and southern extremities of the basin. The activities within these areas should be scrutinized with particular care.

 

On its part, this meeting was an important milestone and created solid ground for the final phase of the project, focusing on drafting a Plan Bothnia MSP plan. This will enroll during the remaining seven months of the project. The excitement is really getting denser and the products more and more beautiful…! All updates can be found in www.planbothnia.org.

 

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What is Maritime Spatial Planning?

“A public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process. Characteristics of marine spatial planning include ecosystem-based, area-based, integrated, adaptive, strategic and participatory”.
(Source: UNESCO initiative on Maritime Spatial Planning)

 

 

 

 

Co-Financed under European Integrated Maritime Policy