PISCES project puts spotlight on stakeholder input

Sarah Twomey & Cathal O’Mahony CMRC

Increasing attention is now being given to the potential of our marine resources to provide badly needed economic stimuli; this however will throw up the familiar challenge of sustainability which involves balancing development and use of the marine environment with the safeguarding of its ecological value.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets out the environmental priorities of Europe’s maritime policy, requiring Member States to put in place a process to achieve good environmental status (GES) for their marine waters by 2020, while also calling for countries to apply the ecosystem -approach to managing human activities at sea.

Implementation and achieving the goals of the MSFD will be demanding and will influence how sea users perform their day-to-day operations.

Implementation guide

Using a unique transnational partnership, the PISCES (Partnerships Involving Stakeholders in the Celtic Sea Ecosystem) project developed an implementation guide to support the MSFD – the PISCES Guide. PISCES represents a new approach to stakeholder-led marine management by bringing together many sea users, not only from different sectors, but also from the different countries that use the Celtic Sea.

Irish stakeholder contributors to the PISCES Guide included representatives from BIM; the Irish Naval Service; Responsible Irish Fish; the Marine Renewable Industry Association of Ireland, and the Irish Marine Federation.

The stakeholders had many good examples of sustainable practices that align perfectly with the Directive’s objective of achieving GES. The step-by-step guide presents the voices of the stakeholders and showcases numerous case studies of good practice.

Collation and sharing of so many sea-user experiences helped different sectors to identify common goals, and even target areas where they went on to pursue joint ventures, e.g. tackling marine litter.

Too often the value of stakeholder input to marine policy is missed. In the case of PISCES, the stakeholder voice – what sea users had to say about their role in marine management – was central to the success of the project. It enabled us to produce guidance material that was grounded in real experience, and will hopefully provide a template for similar initiatives elsewhere.

Initiatives such as PISCES really illustrate the human capacity available to support marine management. Seeing the commitment and enthusiasm of sea users in identifying solutions makes the challenge of sustainability a little less daunting.

The final PISCES Guide was officially launched on November 13 by Lowri Evans, Director General of DG MARE in Brussels.

Further details from: www.projectpisces.eu