Workshop 6: Maritime Spatial Planning/Integrated Coastal Zone Management (MSP/ICZM) in the Mediterranean Sea: implementation status, main gaps and specificities

Conclusions

MSP in the Mediterranean is still at an early stage of implementation and the current on-going projects are trying to facilitate both the implementation of the Directive and cross-border cooperation between countries at a basin scale. The real implementation of MSP in the Mediterranean is still to be tested and coordination between multidisciplinary coastal and marine experts is needed. Harmonization between land and sea planning (as MSP and ICZM) is still far to be achieved and working groups of both land and sea experts are necessary in order to facilitate both coastal and marine spatial planning. Are the current ongoing projects enough for a correct cross border MSP implementation in the Mediterranean?
The practical implementation of the Ecosystem Approach in Mediterranean marine and coastal planning policies still needs to be better understood. It is therefore recommended that a working group involving relevant Mediterranean stakeholders should be created and led by UNEP/MAP to guide a real process of ecosystem-based marine and coastal planning to 2021. Such working group should aim to produce specific guidelines for regional planners and to provide capacity building at the regional level;
Because of its active geology, geo-hazards in the Mediterranean Sea represent a very specific and real tread to infrastructures and densely populated coastal settlements. Due to new technological advances (multi-beams swath bathymetry) a huge amount of data and knowledge for geo-hazard assessment exist in research institutes and universities. Such knowledge should be transferred to society to boost blue economy and insure a sustainable and safe development of human activities in the marine environment.