Busy month of November for MULTI-FRAME project outreach activities!

MSP working group meeting - 13 November 2020

The presentation titled 'Opportunities and challenges for Multi-Use in the Baltic Sea: What can we learn from past and ongoing multi-use projects?' took place during during the 21st HELCOM-VASAB MSP Working Group.

https://vasab.org/event/helcom-vasab-msp-working-group/

The concept of ocean multi-use has gained momentum in recent years, promoted by policy and research agendas. Nevertheless, its practical application remains limited, hampered by strict regulations that often favor a single-use approach and by the lack of information on the environmental impacts and economics of such undertaking. Members of the HELCOM-VASAB MSP Working Group were therefore interested to learn more about the state of the art of multi-use in the Baltic Sea and beyond. The Baltic Sea offers opportunities for several ocean multi-use applications that have been addressed in multiple international research projects such as MUSES, UNITED and MULTI-FRAME. 

s.Pro gave a presentation to raise the awareness about the concept of MSP and communicate the results of past and ongoing projects. The presentation highlighted some of the key recommendations and next steps for the region. The following conclusions were highlighted:

• There is a need for early and continuous involvement of the tourism/ aquaculture/ fishing sectors in Marine Spatial Planning and offshore wind project planning. To facilitate the initiation and deployment of multi-use, the cross sectoral meetings should be organised on an ongoing basis to build ownership for the implementation of the plan. A permanent forum is needed where stakeholders can meet on an ongoing bases (e.g. following the example of the Dutch Multi-Use Community of Practice).
• For offshore wind and fisheries governments have an important role to drive discussions on mitigation measures and synergies, for example as part of the Strategic Environmental Assessment and Sustainability Appraisal processes in Marine Spatial Planning.
• A key step in transition from concept to implementation of multi-use in the Baltic Sea is to identify test sites for multi-use to assess impacts and build confidence of regulators and industry for such undertakings. Despite the fact that the EU has seen a large number of projects dealing with the topic of multi-use there is still an uncertainty about environmental impacts and economics of multi-use due to lack of demonstration pilots.
• Clusters and networks have an important role to facilitate transfer of good practices and knowledge sharing across Member States/ sea basins, generated from existing examples. The importance of the newly formed International Ocean Multi-Use Knowledge Network under MULTI-FRAME project was also highlighted in this regard.

Plan Bleu 1st Capitalisation Event on Marine Renewable Energies  - 10 November 2020

The presentation entitled 'Offshore wind and tourism": Could the two coexist?' took place during the Plan Bleu event devoted to the sustainable development of the potential of the blue economy in the Mediterranean.

https://planbleu.org/en/event/1st-capitalisation-event-on-marine-renewable-energies-mre/

Mediterranean Sea countries are starting to develop their first plans for offshore renewable energy projects, with the aim of supporting the path towards achieving the objectives of their climate agreement. Thus, the presentation of the MULTI-FRAME project focused on the opportunities and challenges of the multi-use combination between offshore wind and other uses. The combination with tourism was the most interesting, given the strong presence and dependence of this sector in the Mediterranean. Awareness raising and capacity building of the tourism sector (i.e. local tour operators) on multi-use as a business opportunity is the key to support its implementation and ensure better local acceptance of these offshore renewable projects.

Global Bioeconomy Summit: Workshop titled Land and sea: sustainable bioeconomy and inter-regional ecosystems - 16 November 2020

 The presentation entitled 'Bioeconomy synergies with other sectors: Ocean Multi-Use Approach" took place during the Agenda topic 3 'Ocean bioeconomy - scaling up regional blue bioeconomy'.

https://gbs2020.net/track4_landandsea/

The concept of multi-use was presented to the global bioeconomy community as an approach that can support a more space efficient and sustainable use of ocean bioeconomy resources. The workshop has touched upon many innovative bioeconomy activities including nowel uses of seaweed aquaculture for making bioplastics and for battling eutrophication. The combination between the restoration efforts and other ocean uses such as offshore wind farms was also discussed. It was highlighted that the systems approach should be used in the new offshore designs where a restoration and/or biodiversity enhancement can also be considered and integrated right from the outset in order to maximize local environmental, as well as socio-economic benefits.