UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the European Commission launched MSPGlobal, a new global project on maritime spatial planning. The project aims to promote better maritime spatial planning with attention to avoiding conflicts and improving the governance of human activities at sea such as aquaculture, tourism, marine energy and exploitation of the seabed.

The three-year MSPglobal project aims to develop international guidelines on maritime spatial planning and regulate activities in coastal and marine waters, which have grown significantly in recent decades.

Two pilot projects will be implemented under MSPglobal to create a repository of data, knowledge, policies and decision-making tools for maritime spatial planning. Their objective is also to strengthen the data management capacities of local authorities. The first pilot project will be deployed in the Western Mediterranean (Algeria, France, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Spain and Tunisia), and the second project will be in the Southeast Pacific and include a specific cross-border exercise in the historic bay of Guayaquil (Ecuador and Peru). Parallel training activities will also be organized with experts from Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Libya, Mauritania, Panama, Peru and Portugal.

The MSPglobal project, combined with the implementation of the nine actions of the Joint Roadmap published by the IOC and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries in 2017, aims to treble the area of territorial waters covered by a maritime spatial planning system by 2030. —UNESCO

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