Between 13 and 15 June 2019, the MSPglobal Initiative organized the first national training course on Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and Sustainable Blue Economy in Lima and held engagement activities with local stakeholders in Tumbes and Puerto Pizarro.
On 13-14 June, over thirty representatives from the government and academia of Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, as well as from intergovernmental and international organizations, increased their institutional and technical capacities to respond to challenges in coastal and marine environments and find practical solutions through MSP and Sustainable Blue Economy.
Following presentations on the MSPglobal Initiative, the concept of MSP – including the IOC-UNESCO step-by-step approach – stakeholder participation and data and information in MSP, participants were divided into three groups to play the MSP Challenge game, representing planners and different maritime sectors. Putting theory into practice, they were asked to define the three fictitious countries’ vision, objectives, indicators, actions, stakeholders and risks for short and long-term to simulate an MSP process.
Each participant then developed individually his or her respective sectorial plans, with current and future conditions, before engaging negotiations with the rest of the players to develop an integrated plan coherent with the national vision and objectives. An additional exercise allowed the planners of three countries to define EEZ boundaries and discuss transboundary coherence between MSP plans placed within the same sea basin.
Organized jointly with the SPINCAM Project and hosted on the premises of Peru’s Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation, the course received the support of the Government of Flanders and Peruvian Navy.
On 15 June, the MSPglobal Team traveled to the northwestern coast of Peru to meet with regional and local authorities of Tumbes and Puerto Pizarro to discuss the MSPglobal pilot case on transboundary MSP in the Gulf of Guayaquil. It was the second visit to the region, after an initial trip in January 2019. More precisely, this visit aimed at identifying conflicts and synergies as well as gaining a better understanding of the local context to plan future engagement activities and partnerships.
The MSPglobal Team met the technical adviser to the Tourist Board of Puerto Pizarro and other local stakeholders to exchange on unregulated tourism activities, marine litter, artisanal fisheries and seafood harvesting, and visited the mangroves.
A representative of the Regional Government of Tumbes and the Mayor of Puerto Pizarro presented an initiative to declare a marine protected area covering all mangroves of the region, and the potential declaration of Puerto Pizarro as a “border municipality”, which could provide additional resources to the City Council to implement public policies.
DOCUMENTS – TRAINING:
Session 1: Presentation of MSPglobal, introduction to the objectives of the training and MSP
Session 2: Stakeholder engagement in MSP
Session 3: Marine spatial data and information
RELATED LINK:
MSPglobal pilot project in the Southeast Pacific
CONTACT:
MSPglobal.comm@unesco.org