Strengthening the role of Blue Fishing Ports in Marine Spatial Planning: IOC-UNESCO and FAO joint efforts

Through its Sustainable Development Goal 17, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls on its agencies, governments and stakeholders to build and enhance partnerships to achieve the 2030 global goals. Walking the talk, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have organized dedicated capacity building activities on Marine Spatial Planning for stakeholders from fishing ports.

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is a marine policy that aims to organize and distribute human activities along the coast and ocean spaces, in a sustainable way meant to achieve ecological, economic and social objectives. MSP is a participatory process and to be successfully implemented, it depends on the compliance of all maritime sectors, which should design or adapt sectoral plans and strategies in line with marine spatial plans.
Increasing participation and uptake within the maritime sectors requires building capacities and exchanging knowledge between actors and institutions. This is the objective of a series of regional workshops organized by UNESCO’s IOC and the FAO, entitled “Engaging Blue Ports in Marine Spatial Planning”. The workshops assembled around 100 participants from 26 countries.

For the Executive Secretary of UNESCO’s IOC, Mr. Vladimir Ryabinin, the workshop series had a clear objective of connecting IOC’s and FAO’s networks, and promoting the new International Guide on Marine/Maritime Spatial Planning among fisheries stakeholders. “The division of labor between organizations of the United Nations system that are involved in ocean matters is continuously becoming more harmonious, and our collaborative efforts in support of the 2030 Agenda maximize the benefit of operational integration of fisheries into ecosystem-based management.”
This collaboration also contributes to the objectives of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), which is a common framework to deliver the ocean science needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals.

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The full article can be found at ioc.unesco.org