This week, the North Sea Regional Advisory Council (NSRAC) Spatial Planning Working Group held its first meeting in London.
The aim of the meeting was to set up Terms of Reference for the group, established at the Executive Committee meeting in Boulogne earlier this year.
The first day of the workshop provided participants with an overview of the potential and pitfalls of spatial planning in the marine environment, how far different countries have come in their work, and experiences from the use of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as a tool in fisheries management as well as in conservation. The problems experienced by fishermen today, related to the current lack of spatial planning in coastal areas, was clearly highlighted by the presentation of “Fishing on a square inch” by the Dutch Fish Product Board.
The presentations laid the foundations for a debate within the working group on its potential to engage with the process of spatial planning and a number of related issues, such as proposals for closed areas and the emerging network of MPAs for marine nature conservation. The meeting agreed to develop its links with the OSPAR MPA process, including seeking information from OSPAR on the spatial distribution of activities other than fishing in the North Sea. The North Sea RAC will also carry out a pilot study to provide data on the distribution of fishing activities in the North Sea, as well as draw up a set of criteria for assessing proposals for closed areas for fish stock conservation and other spatial measures.
The meeting was organised by the Working Group Chairman, Euan Dunn from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), with the support of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the UK.