Side Event

MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING IN PRACTICE – TRANSITIONING FROM PLANNING TO IMPLEMENTATION IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

Organizer
UNEP, GEF-STAP, SCBD, GIZ, IOC/UNESCO, TNC

Date and Time
8 October 2014 13:15 - 14:45

Meeting
Twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

ABSTRACT: Marine spatial planning (MSP) can cover a broad range of initiatives that aim to maintain the use of resources and ecosystem services through careful planning of available coastal or ocean space - essentially any effort that attempts to reconcile more than one sector’s development objectives and activities in a spatial way can be described as MSP. The Side Event will discuss learning and capacity building perspectives from an ongoing initiative of UNEP, GEF-STAP, SCBD and other partners to collect, review and share practical experiences from MSP and implementation in order to understand which approaches are most effective in different contexts and settings. It will present outcomes from a series of country case studies from Parties to the CBD, as well as findings from a global survey on MSP in practice (UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA18/INF/23), and recommendations from the CBD Expert Workshop on MSP (September 2014). This will be framed by a discussion on how specific knowledge about enabling factors distilled from practical MSP processes can support new initiatives in their transitioning from planning into implementation in different context, as well as measures to track actual outcomes of MSP processes. The Side Event will also discuss effective formats and mechanisms to share such learning among planners and practitioners across marine and coastal sectors, coastal land-use and development planning, including web-based information-sharing systems linking existing information sources on marine spatial planning on the web. It will explore regional capacity building needs in association with Regional Seas Programme and the Sustainable Ocean Initiative, including application of metrics delineating EBSAs and ecosystem services in spatial planning. Format: Panel discussion and case study presentations. The side-event addresses CBD COP11 Decision: XI/18 C on Marine Spatial Planning. COP12 agenda item 23: Marine and coastal biodiversity - Tools and capacity development, including marine spatial planning and training initiatives.