SIMNORAT - Final Conference - Presentations
Creators: name: SIMNORAT, Project
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: SIMNORAT
Maritime Spatial Planning
MSP
Northern European Atlantic

description: <strong>The Final Conference of the SIMNORAT project took place in Brest (France) on 29-30 January 2019.</strong>

On the first day, presentations introduced the Atlantic setting, informed about the national MSP implementation, gave an overview of the project results and shared the perspectives on MSP of other EU MSP projects. The activities and outcomes of the case studies were presented in a poster session (Bay of Biscay and North western marine waters of Iberian Coast case studies). On the second day, workshops were held on Ecosystem-based management, data needs and information on MSP as well as on Stakeholder engagement.

<strong>Here you can find the presentations of the plenary sessions of the first day.</strong>

The different documents of the conference have their own dedicated entries on Zenodo:<br>
•    Agenda and Minutes<br>
•    Case study posters<br>
•    Workshops

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<strong>PRESENTATIONS</strong>

9.30 – 10.00: <strong>OPENING ADDRESSES</strong><br>
Facilitated by Dominique Carval, SIMNORAT Project Coordinator, Shom

The SIMNORAT Final conference was opened by representatives of the city, the region, the European Commission as well as the Shom.


	Michel Gourcay, Vice-president, Brest Métropole
	Forough Salami-Dadkhah, Vice-President, Brittany Region
	David Sanmiguel, Project Adviser, Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME), European Commission
	Bruno Frachon, Director of Shom, SIMNORAT project leader


The speeches were given without presentations.

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10.00 – 10.30: <strong>SETTING THE ATLANTIC FRAME</strong><br>
Moderated by Corine Lochet, Deputy Director for international Relations, in charge of EU Affairs<br>
Coordination, Shom

The sessions on Setting the Atlantic frame and the State of Play of the national MSP implementations brought together a number of speakers from the national competent authorities from France, Spain, Portugal and the UK as well as from non-governmental bodies.


	Angela Schultz-Zehden, Project Leader, EU MSP Platform
	Claude Wohrer, Secretariat General to the Sea, France
	Damien Périssé, Director in Charge of Maritime Affairs, Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR)


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14.30 – 15.45: <strong>LESSONS LEARNT FROM SIMNORAT</strong><br>
Facilitated by Dominique Carval, SIMNORAT Project Coordinator, Shom

Representatives of each project partner introduced their work on the different components, presented results and shared what they learnt from their involvement in the project.


	Lise Guennal, CPMR, The Role of the Regions in MSP
	Julien Dilasser, CEREMA, Marine Sectors
	Neil Alloncle &amp; Fanny Bliard, AFB, Marine Conservation
	Ana Lloret, CEDEX, Organising Implementation of MSP
	Adriano Quintela, University of Aveiro, MSP Implementation Methodology
	Ronan Jarno, Shom, Data Needs and Gaps
	Denis Bailly, UBO, AMURE, Improving Stakeholder Engagement


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16.15 – 17.45: <strong>PERSPECTIVES ON MSP</strong><br>
Moderated by Corine Lochet, Deputy Director for international relations, in charge of EU Affairs<br>
Coordination, Shom

Representatives of other European MSP projects shared their experience with the attendees of the SIMNORAT conference. A set of questions made the various perspectives on MSP comparable.

Round table with the participation of:


	Niccolò Bassan, Università Iuav di Venezia, SUPREME Project
	Andrea Barbanti, Research Manager, ISMAR CNR, SIMWESTMED Project
	Ingela Isaksson, Project Manager, Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management,
	Coordinator of the Pan Baltic Scope Project
	Kirsty Wright, Marine Scotland Science, NorthSEE project
	Gaël Potin, Research Engineer at La Réunion University, OCEAN METISS Project
	Cathal O'Mahony, EU Grant Coordinator, University College Cork, SIMCelt Project
	David Sanmiguel, Project Adviser, Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME), European Commission
description: These documents were produced as part of SIMNORAT Project 
(Grant Agreement N0. EASME/EMFF/2015/1.2.1.3/03/SI2.742089). 

Competition for maritime space – for renewable energy equipment, aquaculture and other uses – has highlighted the need to manage our waters more coherently. Maritime spatial planning (MSP) works across borders and sectors to ensure human activities at sea take place in an efficient, safe and sustainable way. That is why the European Parliament and the Council have adopted a legislation to create a common framework for maritime spatial planning in Europe. The Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 (said Maritime Spatial Planning Directive) establishes a framework in order to reduce conflicts between sectors and create synergies between different activities, to encourage investment – by creating predictability, transparency and clearer rules, to increase cross-border cooperation – between EU countries to develop energy grids, shipping lanes, pipelines, submarine cables and other activities, but also to develop coherent networks of protected areas, and to protect the environment – through early identification of impact and opportunities for multiple use of space.

The SIMNORAT project (Supporting Implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning in the Northern European Atlantic) is an EU/DG Mare co-funded cross-border project. It was launched on 1st of January 2017 and involves Portugal, Spain and France, while these countries had just designated their Competent Authorities and transposed the Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive. SIMNORAT aims to support the implementation of the MSP Directive in the waters of Portugal, Spain and France, as well as to establish cross-border cooperation mechanisms between these Member States, to contribute to the coherence of their marine spatial plans to be established in 2021. 

The action ran until 31st of January 2019 and was based on a partnership of public bodies of the countries and one international organisation. It was composed of UAVR, CEDEX, IEO, AFB, CEREMA, Shom, and CPMR. Shom acted as coordinator.

The objectives of the SIMNORAT project were addressed through a variety of activities and desktop or case studies. They are dedicated to identifying the methodology steps, and explore the challenges and opportunities of the MSP implementation in the Northern European Atlantic, including thus related to transboundary issues (Ecosystem based approach, marine policies, OSPAR Convention, Land Sea Interactions, geographical scale of the plans, data interoperability, tools to support MSP). The project led to a multiplicity of outputs including overviews of MSP relevant information related to the countries and on more focus areas, to a number of interviews and meetings where stakeholder views were collected to feed the reasoning, and to guidelines and good practices to be shared at a national and transnational level with marine stakeholders, scientific as well as planners, administrations and authorities. 

In addition, SIMNORAT permitted a lot of progression internally in the countries and regarding transboundary cooperation. It led to establish and develop new dialogues and to connect the technical or scientific actors, the stakeholders, the administrations of the countries of a same sea basin, and the administrations within the countries, including the representative of Regions. It allowed to better understand Maritime Spatial Planning mechanisms, to share knowledge and as such reached to build capacities, which is of importance as there is such a need in the Atlantic area compared to more Northern countries. The project also permitted to address topics which have never been addressed before. 

The involvement of France and Spain in SIMNORAT and in the EU-DG Mare sister projects SIMWESTMED and SIMCelt was useful for them to develop a global vision with their neighbours in the Western Mediterranean.

At the end of this exercise, it is stated the need of pursuing the work and dialogue in particular through common tools, but at this stage, the SIMNORAT project has constituted a common knowledge and background.

D I S C L A I M E R: The contents and conclusions of this report, including the maps and figures were developed by the participating partners with the best available knowledge at the time. They do not necessarily reflect the national governments' positions and are not official documents, nor data. The European Commission or Executive Agency for Small and Medium sized Enterprises is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.