Marine Spatial Planning & Management
With roots in conservation planning and integrated coastal zone management, Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) emerged over the last two decades as a preferred approach for managing marine spaces and resources. With its extensive knowledge of marine and coastal ecosystems, and large accumulated experience of supporting sustainable governance processes, NIRAS is uniquely positioned to support public, private and civil society organisations in all phases of MSP processes. We conduct baseline and forecast analyses to help set the scope of MSP, and provide policy and legal advice for setting up the framework that underpins the entire MSP process. We provide advanced geospatial analysis and visualization tools to support spatial decision-making, and support all kinds of MSP stakeholder engagement processes to ensure inclusiveness and legitimacy. Building on our many years of experience of MSP in different parts of the world, NIRAS is a partner of choice for both capacity development and monitoring, evaluation and learning services.
Highlighted Projects
The overall goal of this ITP was to strengthen institutions engaged in marine spatial planning (MSP) to enable sustainable utilisation of the marine resources in the West Indian Ocean region. The achievement of this goal was based on a Theory of Change, with three objectives:
- Improved institutional capacity to collaborate across sectoral boundaries and to apply holistic goal-driven spatial planning;
- Enhanced institutional capacity for data and knowledge management implemented in marine spatial planning;
- Strengthened national and regional collaboration platforms for long-term networking, cooperation and development in ocean governance and ecosystem-based MSP.
The intervention was carried out in the form of several training programmes, one following the other, with a new batch of participants for each programme. The ITP provided participants with new knowledge, understanding and strengthened self-confidence in relation to MSP, integrated approaches and organisational change processes. We provided organisations participating more extensively in the whole intervention (i.e. across several programmes) with a unique opportunity for institutional strengthening, and to actively promote sustainability, equity, and good governance in the planning and implementation of a prosperous sustainable blue economy in the Western Indian Ocean.
The EU Blue Economy Programme supports the Government of Tanzania to develop and implement the country's blue economy policy and unlock the potential of different blue economy sectors, including: fisheries, forestry, tourism, environmental/biodiversity & climate change, and the coastal and disaster risk reduction sectors.
The general objective of this contract is to ensure the effective, efficient and coordinated implementation of the Blue Economy Programme in Tanzania and Zanzibar. Ensuring the implementation and coordination of an inclusive and comprehensive national blue economy policy requires engagement with national and sub-national public and private sector stakeholders. One of the goals of the proposed contract is to provide support the Government of Tanzania by enhancing internal capacities and reinforcing coordination across different sectors. The budget support component aims to foster transformative governance and policy reforms in the Blue Economy.
The assignment's specific objectives are:
- To support the Government of Tanzania to efficiently engage in policy dialogue and the development of sector reform proposals to improve environment protection and the business environment in the blue economy and to meet the eligibility criteria and achieve the indicators and targets of the budget support component of the Blue Economy Programme;
- To strengthen institutional capacities and the specific expertise of relevant ministries and government authorities to efficiently and effectively fulfil their mandates and sectoral responsibilities related to the Blue Economy;
- To provide technical support to the EU Delegation to monitor and steer the programme and to ensure the overall coordination, optimal alignment and synergies between the different components, contracts and stakeholders of the Blue Economy Programme.
The Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) is a bilateral technical assistance and capacity building programme that provides tailored support to countries to manage the marine environment more sustainably, including by strengthening marine science expertise, developing science-based policy and management tools and creating educational resources for coastal communities.
The NIRAS Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) team were contracted as a continuous management function and a tool for learning, accountability and transparency in the delivery of the programme for the OCPP team, wider stakeholders and the UK Government. The NIRAS MEL team reviewed and revised and managed the MEL framework. The team monitor progress towards achieving expected results through the collection of robust evidence within the MEL framework involving a Working Group, providing management and guidance on monitoring and reporting to the OCPP Programme Teams and providing independent evaluation data.
The team also conducts a suite of independent evaluations of the OCPP, including ad-hoc evaluations, and the collection, analysis and assessment of evidence to understand where and why, or why not, the programme is on track to achieve its aims, and to inform evidenced-based decision making and adaptive management.
NIRAS carried out an inventory and assessment of best practices of cross-border marine spatial planning (MSP) to support EU efforts at providing guidance to its member states and the global MSP community on ensuring planning consistency across borders. NIRAS updated the global inventory of MSP initiatives, conducted four in-depth case studies of cross-border MSP experiences, produced recommendations based on the identified best practices, and supported the EU and IOC UNESCO in organizing and delivering the 2nd Global Conference on MSP held in Paris in 2017.
The international case studies involved elaborating a common framework for assessing the outcomes of MSP, and then carrying out extensive data collection and analysis from four cross-border MSP initiatives: Marine functional zoning in Xiamen, Fujian province and neighbouring provinces; resource planning in the Southern Ocean through the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources; conservation planning in the Coral Triangle region through the Coral Triangle Initiative; and the interaction between state- and federal-level MSP in Rhode Island, USA, through the Ocean Special Area Management Plan.
In addition to providing technical expertise in the field of MSP, NIRAS managed a total of nine subcontractors, field work and workshops across four continents and organised a global conference.
This assignment was conducted as part of the SwAM global programme, which focused on marine spatial planning (MSP) and marine conservation in the Western Indian Ocean Region. The goal of the assignment was for Somalia to adopt its own legal framework for MSP, as a first step towards setting a foundation for transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral planning of the ocean space, for a sustainable use of marine resources and strengthened economic development. Prior to doing so, NIRAS conducted a pilot study to identify the best way of developing the framework, and as such contribute to the foundation for Somalia’s first MSP legal framework.
The assignment comprised of desk-based documentation review to map Somalia’s legal system followed by interviews with key stakeholders. NIRAS described the process of developing and adopting policy, legal and regulatory frameworks in Somalia, and analysed the existing legislation relevant to MSP. In addition, NIRAS conducted a comparative study, and analysis of the MSP legal frameworks of South Africa and Nigeria and proposed a methodology for the development of the Somali MSP legal framework. Finally, NIRAS developed a set of recommendations for the development of MSP in Somalia.
