Land-Sea-Act

Coastal municipalities can be affected by new developments in the Baltic Sea, but their interests are not always taken into account in maritime spatial plans. Furthermore, new uses such as marine aquaculture or wind energy generation can conflict with traditional sea activities like fishing, tourism and leisure. The project Land-Sea-Act wants to explore better governance practices to balance local communities’ and small scale businesses’ interests with large scale development and investment interests in maritime spatial planning.

Project summary

Blue Growth challenges

Integrated planning in marine areas and on land is often not coherent. This coherence is a key challenge and at the same time – precondition for Blue Growth. Another challenge is to recognize the relationships and inter-dependencies between marine ecosystems, landscapes, social and cultural values and economic sectors by taking into account interactions between land and sea.

Working together to improve coastal management

The project guides national, regional and local authorities, as well as stakeholders of various sectors to improve transnational cooperation and facilitate knowledge exchange to foster Blue Growth; to raise awareness, knowledge and skills to enhance Blue Growth initiatives and integrated development in coastal areas; and to balance the development of new sea uses with coastal community interests by improving coastal governance. In demonstration cases the project partners and involved stakeholders closely collaborate to explore and recommend new flexible governance practices for coastal management. The project activities lead to additional knowledge and improved skills to solve common land-sea interaction challenges.

Project results

The main result of this project is a multi-level governance agenda on blue growth and spatial planning in the Baltic Sea region. The project also provides various reports and guiding documents for stakeholders of transnational organisations, national authorities, municipalities, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

Budgets

Land-Sea-Act
in numbers

2.20

Million

Total
1.76

Million

Erdf
0.00

Million

Eni + Russia
0.00

Million

Norway

Highlights

Municipalities, regional councils and a ministry together with NGO partners worked on spatial planning solutions for the development of blue economy business in coastal areas. At the Southwestern Kurzeme coast of Latvia, the partners assessed trade-offs for advancing off-shore renewable energy in line with the national interests and local community interests, while maintaining the coastal landscape and tourism development.
In the Polish Gulf of Gdansk, the partners looked into how to include social and cultural values of marine ecosystems into maritime spatial plans and promote them as a business opportunity in the tourism sector.

On Germany’s Fehmarn island, the partners studied the effects of climate change on the tourism sector with the prolonged summer season and more tourists influencing wildlife and coastal protected areas.

The Estonian municipalities of Haljala and Vihula looked at how to enhance small harbours along the coast line for leisure activities, trying to avoid tensions with local communities involving economic, military and nature protection concerns.

The Danish municipality of Holbæk focused on developing the harbour area for using cultural heritage and traditional shipbuilding as resource for tourism entrepreneurship.

The Swedish city of Gothenburg worked on a regional maritime strategy for improved cooperation and innovative methods for sustainable development of coastal areas.

The results of these cases feed into the compendium of methodologies on how to address land-sea interaction and development trade-offs in coastal areas.

Outputs

Project Stories