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”. 

The EU MSP Directive is an example of a so-called new generation directive, which gives Member States room foradaptation to national contexts. The main objective in this article is to identify and analyse potential obstacles toeffective and efficient planning caused by the diversity among national MSP frameworks that the Directive'sbroad regulatory boundaries have led to. It is shown that planning approaches can differ substantially betweenneighbouring countries, which can make it challenging to coordinate across national borders. Divergence betweennational MSP frameworks can also emerge from how political, jurisdictional and, administrative systemsand traditions are organised in different Member States. It is shown that neighbouring countries can divergesubstantially in how the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability are balanced, which canmake transnational coordination challenging. Furthermore, it is shown that stakeholder consultations differamong Member States in terms of, for example, who were invited, how the consultations were undertaken, andthe role they play in relation to political decision-making. Because of these, and other differences in how MSPframeworks are being developed in the Member States, it is suggested that regional integration should bepromoted with discretion. From this perspective, it seems reasonable to embrace diversity, while simultaneouslypromoting the adaptive management of coordination problems at lower levels, when, or if, they emerge or canbe foreseen. Thus, increased integration of national MSP frameworks should be viewed as an instrument toreduce concrete efficiency losses, rather than as an intrinsic good.

Marine spatial planning (MSP) has emerged as a radical approach to achieving sustainable development objectives at sea. While critics challenge its avowed radicalness, often through highlighting dominative processes, more insidious mechanisms of restricted agency remain under-elaborated, as are the productive power and potential of planning. This paper offers a more robust and balanced reading of MSP/power. First, drawing on Haugaard, we read MSP as providing actors with dispositional power to act in concert, thus entailing a move from the risks of ‘resource rush’ to structuring, which facilitates predictability and promotes agency. However, MSP’ing may also restrict agency when (1) powerful actors misuse opportunities for concerted action to pursue sectoral goals; (2) planning fantasies and the planner’s cognitive limitation sustain dominative power-relations; and (3) in setting the boundaries of MSP, bias is mobilized in favor of vested interests. We thus deploy Foucault’s notion of freedom, to analyze the relationship between ‘steering’ and resistance subjectivities, and his concept of parrhesias to consider to what extent, an ethico-political planner may contribute towards more equitable processes and outcomes. We conclude that besides the planner, the state as the ultimate authority in MSP must intervene substantively to minimize differentials in the distribution of actors’social resources.

Approaching land grabbing as a site of politics wherein power functions in the challenge and/or stabilization of agrarian socioecological injustices, we capture agrarian relations in Cameroon in 2 fundamental ways. Drawing on Laclauian insights, we discuss power as a “counter‐hegemonic” practice, to characterize the resistance strategies of local NGOs, in terms of their articulated discourses around the socioecological effects of land grabs, on the one hand, and the political possibilities that this articulatory practice opens, in terms of (trans)nationalizing resistance across social identities and space, on the other hand. Here, the analysis adopts a Foucauldian‐inspired critique with strong commitments towards agrarian socioecological justice, in a context where policies to protect democratic access to land are absent. Second, framed as a hegemonic/governmental “form of rule,” we capture how state and diplomatic actors sought to override dissent and stabilize the contentious land deal. We also show how a moment of presidential “nondecision,” characterized by a hyper‐centralized bureaucracy conjoined with these hegemonic forces to disempower local administrative and judicial leverage, thereby fostering corporate power. The article thus contributes to debates on state and corporate powers, as well as the strategies of, or possibilities and constraints for resistance “from below” to irradiate and structure into a compelling force.

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the Global South are increasingly subjected to the internationalisation of food systems. Guided by a feminist political ecology approach, we examine how gender relations and power structures within SSF are changing through policy interventions and market linkages. Chilean women working in SSF have traditionally been unregistered direct producers. Since the early 2000s, however, women have formally entered as fishers within this hitherto male-dominated space. Today, women constitute almost a quarter of artisanal fishers in Chile. While women have become more visible, among others, in their engagement in territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs), little research attention has been paid to women’s roles within SSF. We redress this shortfall by examining the struggle to obtain TURFs by an all-women seaweed gatherers union in Coliumo (Bio-Bio Region, Chile). Using participatory research tools, we describe key gendered interactions and events over a local struggle for resources. Our findings show how closely related episodes of cooperation and conflict were involved in realising TURFs, which included differently-gendered relationships. While the women implicated in formalising fishing entitlements accrued individual benefit and enhanced their collective standing, the conflict left a deep scar among women in the community.

The EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSP Directive) from 2014 is an example of a so-called new generation directive, which gives Member States room for adaptation to national contexts. Because of this larger room for adaptation, transposition becomes a process of designing domestic policy frameworks that fulfil the broad requirements of the Directive, rather than a simple and linear implementation procedure. However, allowing Member States to design marine spatial planning frameworks that fit domestic contexts, have thus far meant that regional coherence suffers. Although the pivotal role of transnational coordination is emphasised in the Directive, it does not stipulate how to set up such coordination, and the Member States have not yet been able to achieve much of self-organising in this area.A closer look is in this report taken on four policy-dimensions that are emphasised in the MSP Directive: Planning approach, Organisation, Sustainability, and Stakeholder inclusion. Based on in-depth case studies carried out in the BALTSPACE research project on MSP frameworks in Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden, examples of coordination and coherency challenges are described and discussed for each dimension.It is shown that planning approaches can differ substantially between neighbouring countries, which can make it challenging to coordinate across country borders. Even though they share the same (EU) regulatory pressures, Latvia and Lithuania, for example, are developing national MSP frameworks based on quite different conceptual foundations. Whereas Latvia has taken the Ecosystem Approach as a point of departure for constructing a new MSP framework, Lithuania has instead chosen to adapt existing functional zoning approaches to management of maritime areas. Such diversity may be possible to explain because of differing domestic contexts, but may nevertheless lead to coordination problems when coordination is needed.Divergence between national MSP frameworks can also emerge from different political, jurisdictional and, administrative systems and traditions, that is, in societal organisation. In an example based on case studies undertaken in Denmark and Sweden, it is shown that degree of societal centralisation and distribution of political power can be related to differences in how environmental protection and blue growth are prioritised. However, it is difficult to tell whether diverging prioritisations have led to differences on organisation, or of it is the other way around, that differences in organisation have led to diverging prioritisations.It is stated in the MSP Directive that the overarching objective is to promote sustainable development. The focus on sustainable development can be said to reflect the Directive’s new generation characteristics. The concept of sustainable development is broad and imprecise, which facilitates political agreement. However, when more precise details must be addressed, disagreements may surface that make implementation challenging. In cases where neighbouring countries diverge substantially on how ecological, economic and social sustainable ought to be balanced, finding agreements on how to coordinate policies and practices, when needed, can be difficult. Based on case studies in Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden, it is, for example, argued that adoption of functional zoning or the Ecosystem Approach may not say much about how ecological, economic, and social dimensions are prioritised in different countries.Stakeholder consultations of some kind have historically been undertaken in all Baltic Sea countries. However, how such consultations have been undertaken, who have been invited, and the role the consultations play in relation to political decision-making differ, as shown in examples from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Poland. Because the MSP Directive is silent on how to design stakeholder consultations – it only says that they should be held – there is no political pressure on regional coordination. It is not clear from our data if these differences cause efficiency losses due to coordination deficits, but a reasonable assumption is that when, for example, marine natural resources are shared between two or more countries, jointly designed and undertaken consultations on specific transboundary issues potentially can promote transparency, understanding, and coordination.In conclusion, it is suggested that while regional coherency is often called for as a means to reduce inefficiencies, it might not be a good idea to integrate without discretion. Considering that the MSP Directive allows domestic context to matter when Member States design national MSP frameworks and that adaptation to domestic context is likely to reduce implantation gaps and increase the legitimacy of marine spatial planning, a more reasonable objective can be to embrace domestic diversity, while simultaneously adaptively promoting possibilities to solve coordination problems at lower levels, if they emerge or can be foreseen. From this perspective, increased coherence is a tool to reduce efficiency losses, rather than an intrinsic good.

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.