Marine Spatial Planning

Marine spatial planning (MSP) is a process that brings together multiple users of the ocean – including energy, industry, government, conservation and recreation – to make informed and coordinated decisions about how to use marine resources sustainably. MSP generally uses maps to create a more comprehensive picture of a marine area – identifying where and how an ocean area is being used and what natural resources and habitat exist. It is similar to land-use planning, but for marine waters.

Through the planning and mapping process of a marine ecosystem, planners can consider the cumulative effect of maritime industries on our seas, seek to make industries more sustainable and proactively minimize conflicts between industries seeking to utilise the same sea area. The intended result of MSP is a more coordinated and sustainable approach to how our oceans are used – ensuring that marine resources and services are utilized, but within clear environmental limits to ensure marine ecosystems remain healthy and biodiversity is conserved.

The most commonly used definition of marine spatial planning was developed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO:

Marine spatial planning is 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.

Marine spatial planning is not an end in itself, but a practical way to create and establish a more rational use of marine space and the interactions among its uses, to balance demands for development with the need to protect the environment, and to deliver social and economic outcomes in an open and planned way.

The main elements of marine spatial planning include an interlinked system of plans, policies and regulations; the components of environmental management systems (e.g. setting objectives, initial assessment, implementation, monitoring, audit and review); and some of the many tools that are already used for land use planning. Whatever the building blocks, the essential consideration is that they need to work across sectors and give a geographic context in which to make decisions about the use of resources, development, conservation and the management of activities in the marine environment

Effective marine spatial planning has essential attributes:

The IOC-UNESCO Marine Spatial Planning Programme helps countries implement ecosystem-based management by finding space for biodiversity, conservation and sustainable economic development in marine areas. IOC-UNESCO has developed several guides, including a 10-step guide on how to get a marine spatial plan started: "Step-by-step Approach for Marine Spatial Planning toward Ecosystem-based Management". IOC-UNESCO has also developed a world-wide inventory of MSP activities.

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Wikipedia