Land-sea interactions in European marine governance: State of the art, challenges and recommendations

Abstract

The recent economic development of maritime areas has led to the emergence of new approaches to marine governance in many regions. Unfortunately, the complexity of the natural and socio-economic processes that characterise the marine and coastal ecosystems is generally not sufficiently considered by the existing governance mechanisms. This explains that the inclusion of land-sea interactions (LSIs) in marine and coastal governance remains particularly weak and somewhat inadequate to address the current challenges, especially in Europe. The literature review showed that the mechanisms currently in place for this purpose are highly fragmented, even though legislation has been introduced at the EU level. Focusing on the implementation of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD), four types of obstacles to the integration of LSIs into marine and coastal governance have been identified. They are classified as issue-related, institutional, process-related and knowledge-related. To overcome these challenges, three recommendations have been developed in this paper: 1) the effective implementation of EU marine and coastal legislation's fundamental principles related to an integrated approach; 2) the development of new governance mechanisms to enhance policy coordination and 3) the development of collaborative governance processes. The policy recommendations for LSI integration in marine and coastal governance formulated have not been tested through specific case studies. Therefore, the next step would be to create innovative governance mechanisms for a selection of cases.