Two decades of progress in Marine Spatial Planning

Abstract

This paper reviews the key developments of ocean management leading up to and over the past decade, especially marine or maritime spatial planning and ecosystem-based management, with an emphasis on the former. From scattered seeds in a few marine places—from early marine spatial analysis and data atlases to the EU Marine Spatial Directive in 2014—MSP has grown to a world-wide movement by governments at various levels to manage comprehensively marine resources in space and time. Early efforts to apply systems thinking to marine planning, especially in oWestern/Northern Europe, have developed an extensive knowledge base of what works and doesn't work based not only on academic theory, but now on practical experience. From a few pioneering examples of the implementation of MSP by 2005, today over 75 countries are experimenting with MSP as a practical approach toward ecosystem-based marine management. The paper begins with a summary of early attempts to map the geography of the sea and to define how planning at sea began to some of the first applications of MSP from 1980 to 2005. Real-world efforts to apply MSP, especially in Western/Northern Europe and North America are identified and described. A few key milestones of MSP—the first international workshop on MSP (2006), the early work of the EC in funding pilot MSP projects in Europe, the EU MSP Directive of 2014, and the second international workshop on MSP in 2017 are noted. Current MSP activities in world regions are summarised and characterised. Finally, a target for MSP outcomes by 2030 and future challenges for MSP are identified.