The challenges of marine spatial planning in the Arctic: Results from the ACCESS programme

Abstract

Marine spatial planning is increasingly used to manage the demands on marine areas, both spatially and temporally, where several different users may compete for resources or space, to ensure that development is as sustainable as possible. Diminishing sea-ice coverage in the Arctic will allow for potential increases in economic exploitation, and failure to plan for cross-sectoral management could have negative economic and environmental results. During the ACCESS programme, a marine spatial planning tool was developed for the Arctic, enabling the integrated study of human activities related to hydrocarbon exploitation, shipping and fisheries, and the possible environmental impacts, within the context of the next 30 years of climate change. In addition to areas under national jurisdiction, the Arctic Ocean contains a large area of high seas. Resources and ecosystems extend across political boundaries. We use three examples to highlight the need for transboundary planning and governance to be developed at a regional level.

Operationalising a social–ecological system perspective on the Arctic Ocean

“…models developed in Eide 2017 , Petrick et al 2017 ) and a user-friendly interface to test strategies and their performance against particular objectives. Such interface could include an Arctic marine spatial planning tool (Edwards and Evans 2017 ) and available datasets (Godøy and Saadatnejad 2017 ).…”

Combining Marine Ecology and Economy to Roadmap the Integrated Coastal Management: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The bright red module was strongly connected to the blue one by four papers involved in multiple associations, mostly related to coastal planning (paper #48, [38]; #183, [39]; #281, [40]). The sole exception was a best-practice commentary aimed at involving citizens in environmental management ( [41], p. 342,).…”

Arctic Climate Change, Economy and Society (ACCESS): Integrated perspectives

“…New economic activities developing in the Arctic Ocean are also likely to influence Arctic marine resources, as investigated in ACCESS, through increased pressure on the environment due to increased pollution from oil spills (Nordam et al 2017 ; Wilkinson et al 2017 ) and maybe air pollution (Law et al 2017 ). Market changes could substantially influence the demand for these resources (Crépin et al 2017 ; Petrick et al 2017 ; Troell et al 2017 ) and economic activities could compete in using sensitive ecosystem areas (Edwards and Evans 2017 ).…”

“…Several syntheses were produced for example on food chain interactions in the marine Arctic (Crépin et al 2017 ), seafood production (Troell et al 2017 ) and existing governance regimes and gaps (NERC 2015 ). Finally, the project contributed tools for research and management support like a data management system (Godøy and Saadatnejad 2017 ), an advanced Arctic Ocean observing system (IAOOS) (Gascard 2012 ), a pan-Arctic marine spatial planning tool (Edwards and Evans 2017 ), a framework for integrated ecosystem-based management (Crépin et al 2017 ) and a set of Arctic indicators for sustainable development (NERC 2015 ). The project also organized two workshops dedicated to indigenous peoples and two transdisciplinary PhD courses, published newsletters, and policy briefs.…”