On 16 March, the SEAPLANSPACE project kickoff meeting took place at the University of Gdansk in Poland. 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 region. The project phases include assessment, development, and implementation of the MSP training.
The University of Gdansk is the lead partner of the project. WMU says it 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 analyzing 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.