While there is growing critique emerging to address social sustainability in marine/maritime spatial planning (MSP), overwhelmingly attention has been on governance, economic and environmental aspects. This chapter redresses this by proposing a conceptual framework to elucidate key features of social sustainability in MSP. The ambition is to both note the existing critique of MSP and go beyond it by more clearly and comprehensively articulating how social sustainability could be conceived in MSP, as well as how this framework could be applied to analyse MSP practice. Key features of social sustainability elaborated are: deepening democratic decision-making, inclusion of socio-cultural values and knowledge, equitable distribution and social cohesion. Finally, the chapter concludes by nominating strategies to give greater visibility to social sustainability as a key MSP concern.

Over-fishing and eutrophication (too much nutrients) are among the most severe threats to the ecosystems of the Baltic Sea and the ecosystem services they provide. Despite the well-known fact that effective and sustainable management requires cooperation – among as well as within states – appropriate frameworks that work have not yet been constructed and successfully applied. This report summarises findings from a research project on cooperation for sustainable marine governance of the Baltic Sea carried out between 2013 and 2018. Three aspects of central relevance for the understanding of regional cooperation in environmental governance are distinguished: interests, knowledge and management. It is shown that it is not enough to design cooperative arrangements that make the group of users, stakeholders or states better off than without such an arrangement. It is furthermore required that all actors have individual interests to participate, and that free-riding on others’ contributions can be controlled. When this is not the case, effective abatement of eutrophication is not likely to be forthcoming, even though aggregated benefits from such measures are larger than expected costs.

Knowledge often play important roles in marine environmental governance, not least in relation to so-called epistemic communities, that is, groups of experts that share a common understanding of the environmental problem at hand, and how to address it. It is shown that the coherence of the epistemic group can be a crucial factor influencing its impact. In both abatement of eutrophication and management of fish stocks, these expert groups have been somewhat divided, which has limited their impact.

Modes of management can influence cooperation and outcomes in ways that can be difficult to predict. Although environmental taxes and subsidies are powerful policy instruments in contemporary governance, they must be carefully crafted to fit into exiting norms and contexts to be effective. It is shown that monetary incentives targeting farmers’ use of fertilisers tend not to be effective when they are at odds with deeply held norms on what constitute a “good farmer”. 

Despite the increasing attention given to marine spatial planning and the widely acknowledged need for transnational policy coordination, regional coherence has not yet improved a great deal in the Baltic Sea region. Therefore, the main objectives in this article are: (a) to map existing governance structures at all levels that influence how domestic marine spatial planning policy strategies are formed, (b) to identify specific challenges to improved regional cooperation and coordination, and (c) to discuss possible remedies. Based on data from in-depth case studies carried out in the BONUS BALTSPACE research project, it is shown that, despite the shared goal of sustainability and efficient resource use in relevant EU Directives, action plans and other policy instruments, domestic plans are emerging in diverse ways, mainly reflecting varying domestic administrative structures, sectoral interests, political prioritisations, and handling of potentially conflicting policy objectives. A fruitful distinction can be made between, on the one hand, regulatory institutions and structures above the state level where decision-making mechanisms are typically grounded in consensual regimes and, on the other hand, bilateral, issue-specific collaboration, typically between adjacent countries. It is argued that, to improve overall marine spatial planning governance, these two governance components need to be brought together to improve consistency between regional alignment and to enhance opportunities for countries to collaborate at lower levels. Issue-specific transnational working groups or workshops can be one way to identify and act upon such potential synergies.

While modern society is highly dependent on chemicals, numerous substances also turn out to be hazardous and many give rise to severe risks and problems in the marine environment. In response, national, regional and global chemical policies, often focusing on the land-based sources to marine pollution, have been developed, as outlined in the article. As a result, the levels of some pollutants have decreased, but the vast majority of substances are not controlled in line with the internationally stated objectives of sound management of chemicals. An environment-oriented development of present policies, implementing the precautionary principle, is considered needed in order to improve the situation, and the question is raised in the article whether the present main international chemicals agreements would not also gain from being merged into a global framework convention.

This chapter develops an analytical framework, drawing on the multidimensional role of integration, to explore how the Ecosystem Approach (EA) is variously conceived and practiced in marine spatial planning (MSP) in the Baltic Sea region (BSR). This framework is used to examine how EA practices reflect differing conceptions of sustainable development (SD) in Baltic marine and coastal areas. This work intersects with several of the other chapters on marine planning in this volume by explicitly exploring links between EA and SD through examination of in-depth BSR case studies. Results reveal that EA principles for MSP developed at the international level (HELCOM/VASAB) and in some national MSP settings (e.g. Latvia), combined with a common assumption of ecological limits to development, largely acknowledge a wide definition of EA as a governance approach building on societal choice and diverse knowledge inclusion (as seen e.g. in the Malawi principles). However, looking at more specific guidelines and MSP practices, there is a significant gap between espoused principles and the practical implementation of EA in BSR MSP, especially regarding social aspects of sustainability such as participation, social inclusion and knowledge pluralism. While work on ecological services in EA looks promising as a means of developing joined-up thinking between ecological and economic interests, it is uncertain whether this approach can deliver on EA’s social sustainability ambitions. We conclude the chapter by discussing ways that could strengthen the social pillar in MSP as a form of governance to bridge the gap between EA principles and practice.

This report is part of the BONUS BALTSPACE project and is focused on challenges for policy and sector integration in Baltic Sea marine spatial planning (MSP). The main objectives have been to identify concrete coordination problems, to analyse why they have emerged and to discuss possible remedies. It is based on selected aspects extracted from case studies carried out in this project related to the development of regional MSP approaches in Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden and on an additional case study on the HELCOM-VASAB Working Group on MSP. To facilitate the analysis of vertical policy interactions between institutions at different levels as well as of horizontal interactions over sector and country borders, an analytical framework was constructed. This framework consists of two main components; (a) institution-driven coordination where institutions such as global treaties, the EU, regional organisations, and state authorities provide boundaries for decisions taken at lower levels and (b) benefit-driven coordination capturing horizontal coordination across sector and country borders.

This Deliverable elaborates an evaluation design for MSP that responds to a growing call for a more nuanced and critical conceptualisation and implementation of MSP as complex sites of governance. Here we posit that such an evaluation design should be based on 'sustainability of governance' in MSP. Furthermore, that such an evaluation approach should be built on good governance principles of participation, coordination, openness and collaboration in governance processes with the aim to strengthen MSP on both democratic and functionality grounds. To advance this position, we elaborate the relationship between integration as a concept that can be used to examine the sustainability of governance in practice. The conceptual framework is then used to structure a discussion of illustrative examples of the relationship between integration and sustainability of governance across several Baltic Sea case-studies. The results of these case studies are then framed in a discussion on aspects that need to be considered when designing an evaluation process for MSP. Points highlighted here are the need to adopt a deliberative and reflexive approach that draws on a wide body of evidence in evaluation. A set of clustered evaluative criteria (CEC), referring to practices deemed to be desirable for sustainability of MSP governance, are proposed to guide or direct an evaluation process. The CEC were derived through an assessment of what is deemed important in the relevant literature as well as through consideration of the experience of the Baltic cases. The CEC could be seen as indicators of integration that relate to aspects of sustainability of governance in MSP, as well as, in more instrumental terms to support problem-solving aimed at improving MSP coherence. The evaluation design outlined here would require to be tested and trialled in MSP settings to assess its saliency and refine its usability in practice.

Developing integrative decision-making underpinned by a diverse knowledge base is seen as essential to meet marine spatial planning’s (MSP) sustainable development aspirations. In contributing to a better understanding of how this might be achieved, this report considers knowledge integration challenges drawing on several MSP empirical cases across the Baltic Sea Region. Each case-study, involves Baltic Sea states at different stages of developing national marine spatial plans. At the Baltic-wide level, HELCOM-VASAB has interpreted the Ecosystem Approach in MSP as relying heavily on an evidence-base informed by natural scientific and expert knowledge. The results of the report show that challenges arise when trying to apply scientific knowledge to MSP events or processes for a number of reasons such as, incomplete data and associated substantial uncertainty or because stakeholders contest the policy interpretation of the data. This raises questions of how to assess or evaluate the quality and comprehensiveness/sufficiency of scientific and stakeholder knowledge or input into MSP decision-making, particularly in highly politicised, conflictual contexts, such as the integration of parts of the fishing sector in MSP in Poland. MSP in German territorial waters provides a positive example, where science and stakeholder knowledge input have been integrated in decision-making through informal and formal processes. This case exhibits evidence of social learning where authorities have reflected on previous experiences and invested in actively nurturing the meaningful participation of a wide variety of stakeholders (to form a community of practice) over an extended period of time. The key findings of the report call for more attention to be paid to ways that scientific and stakeholder knowledge can be fruitfully incorporated in MSP, through initiatives such as: the development of knowledge evaluation measures; drawing more actively on social science expertise to help facilitate processes of stakeholder engagement and knowledge inclusion; and paying more attention to how to include heterogeneous socio-cultural values and knowledge (placed-based) in a way that improves the salience of scientific knowledge and the legitimacy of MSP decision-making.