Water for life – LIFE for water
A Conference of the LIFE Programme
A.2 The Marine Strategy Framework Directive – how can proven collaborative governance techniques help in implementing the MSFD?
Covering two thirds of our planet, the sea holds 80% of all life on earth. The EU’s coastline stretches over 100,000 km and seas make up more than half of its territory. At least 16% of the EU population live in coastal areas; many more depend on the sea for work, leisure, food or other products and services. Most people are unaware of what is happening just beyond our shorelines but the list of threats to our seas is long: destructive fishing practices and over-fishing, littering and pollution from the sea and land, invasive species, coastal construction and impacts of climate change to name but a few. Managing the marine environment is a complex business that requires cooperation between local, national and international stakeholders, including non-member states whose activities may impact on our regional seas.
In 2002, marine protection was included as one of the seven thematic strategies under the 6th EAP. In the last decade, EU legislation has moved towards an integrated approach rather than addressing problems individually. The need to bring more integration into costal zone management was acknowledged in the 2007 Commission Communication on the evaluation of ICZM. The EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive that came into force on the 15th July 2008 with the goal of achieving Good Environmental Status in Europe’s Seas by 2020 also largely recognises the need for an integrated approach to address marine area management and protection.
The Directive covers all marine areas including the coastal zone and deep sea. Importantly, the Directive adopts an ‘ecosystem-based approach’ to the management of human activities and recognises the role of protected areas as a tool for maintaining ecosystem health. The Directive also acknowledges that many of the threats facing Europe’s seas require cooperation between member states (and non-member states) to tackle them effectively. The MSFD outlines eleven high level descriptors of good environmental quality and follows the general format of the Water Framework Directive.
It must also link closely with the Common Fisheries Policy, the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive as well as a number of international agreements relating to the protection of the marine environment from pollution.
This session will address techniques and collective approaches to marine ecosystem management (setting indicators, stakeholder consultation, conflict resolution, pollution control, etc) as well as governance issues relating to Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) and cooperation between coastal users to reduce the anthropogenic impacts in regional seas. In particular, it will assess the:
This session will:
Identify how best practice/experience/results from LIFE projects can be transferred and replicated in the context of the MSFD.
Using the experience of selected LIFE projects, the objectives are to:
Policy issues that will benefit from the session are the implementation of the new MFSD, the WFD, and the general “integrated approach” to address marine protection and management.
