No abstract

Knowledge of ecosystem services (ES) and the benefits provided by offshore marine areas, including the welfare impacts from the establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs) is still limited. In the present study we evaluated benefits from ES, citizens’ willingness-to-pay for potential changes in the provision of ES, and welfare losses to citizens due to restrictions on economic activities from establishing new offshore MPAs in Latvian waters. The scenarios for the economic valuation were based on analysing the supply of ES from the protected marine habitats, showing changes in the ES supply in policy relevant scenarios of the MPA size. Our study evaluates a wide array of ES delivered by offshore protected habitats and reveals that citizens’ willingness-to-pay for preserving habitats and ES supply exceeds their welfare losses from restrictions in economic activities. Our approach supports the prioritisation of habitat types according to their contribution to ES supply and benefits for citizens. The analysis can be complemented with spatial data regarding distribution of habitats, providing an opportunity to identify areas with the highest ES benefits to support marine protection and spatial planning.

The aim of this paper is to provide the foundations for the development of a spatial decision-support toolset that combines cumulative impacts and ecosystem service supply assessments to support what-if scenario analysis in a maritime spatial planning context. Specifically, a conceptual framework for a toolset has been designed in order to introduce a new approach for place-based assessments of change in relative ecosystem service supply in multiple services at a time due to changes in cumulative impacts. Central to the toolset are two pre-existing approaches for relative ecosystem service supply and cumulative impact assessments and tools that facilitate them. The tools take advantage of available data from various sources, including geodata and expert knowledge, and have already been proven to support maritime spatial planning in a real-world context. To test the new approach and demonstrate the outputs, an ecosystem service supply assessment was done manually using the two currently separate tools. The results of the test case ecosystem service supply assessment for the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea are also presented in this paper and illustrate the assessment steps and data needs. Although presently the focus of the illustrative assessment is the Gulf of Riga, the toolset will be able to accommodate analysis of cumulative impacts and service supply of any location, leaving the scope of the assessment to be determined by the objectives of the assessment as well as data availability (i.e., geospatial data availability and extent of expert knowledge).

With the blue economic sectors growing, marine macroalgae cultivation plays an important role in securing food and energy supplies, as well as better water quality in sustainable ways, whether alone or as part of a cluster solution to mitigate the effects of fish farming. While macroalgae cultivation exists in Europe, it is not that widely distributed yet; with increasing marine activities at sea, Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) needs to ensure social recognition as well as social and spatial representation for such a new marine activity. This comparative case study analysis of MSPs of three eastern Baltic Sea countries explores the levels of support for the development of macroalgae cultivation in MSP and the degree of co-location options for this new and increasingly important sector. It presents new analytical ways of incorporating co-location considerations into the concept of social sustainability. The results of this study support the harmonisation of views on co-location, propose ways of using space to benefit multiple users as well as marine ecosystems, and highlight some of the key social challenges and enablers for this sector.