17 SEAPLANSPACE Karin Topsø MSP and Coastal and Maritime Tourism
Hello, my name is Karen Topso Larsen and I'm going to welcome you to this webinar as part of the SEAPLANSPACE project. Today I'll be talking about maritime spatial planning MSP and its relevance for coastal and maritime tourism development in the South Baltic. I'll just take you through a series of slides beginning with an introduction of myself.
I'm from the Center for Regional and Tourism Research which is located on the Danish island of Bornholm. I'm a senior researcher there. My research is on local and regional development most of the time with a focus on peripheral areas. I'm not MSP specialist but the planning of the oceans that surround the island of Bornholm is a prerequisite for any development, that is of course one of the aspects that I study. The Center for Regional and Tourism Research is partner in the sea plant space project and we are contributing by webinars, by workshops and by making a country-specific manual about MSP and the MSP process in Denmark.
Today I'll be talking about why tourism is relevant for the MSP process or perhaps more aptly, why MSP is relevant for tourism development. I'll be talking a little bit about the background of tourism development in the South Baltic and I'll be talking specifically about MSP planning perspectives in tourism. Some of the things that i will focus on is are the potential conflicts of MSP in tourism planning. Finally, I'll look to the future, about future potential developments and how MSP planning processes can perhaps help to shape a more sustainable tourism in the future.
Why MSP is important for coastal and maritime tourism in the Baltic? Coastal maritime tourism represents more than one third of the maritime economy in the total EU. At the same, time it has been identified as a special sector which has huge potential for sustainable growth under the Blue Growth strategy so it is a very important aspect of the future of the EU and our future sustainability. However, coastal and maritime tourism depends heavily on the quality of the environment and also it is a very important aspect of a good coexistence of the different uses of maritime space. So there's a special case for tourism in MSP and some of the challenges that face tourism actually are in a situation where MSP potentially, if MSP functions as it should, could be an important leverage for the growth and sustainability of the tourism sector. I'll just go into a few definitions. When I talk about tourism there isn't really any good definition of tourism but the UNWTO which is the United Nations World Tourism Organization does have a definition that we usually use, and it's sort of one thing that we can agree on but it doesn't say very much. And the definition of tourism is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which
entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment. They go there for personal or business or professional purposes. We can under that definition talk about two different types of tourism overall. One is what's called commercial tourism
which happens when people pay for the overnight stays, and a lot of tourism is actually counted economically based on accommodation, about how many people have overnight stays. Then there's non-commercial tourism. This is the act of people going somewhere else than where they usually live but they don't pay for staying overnight. So this is the type of tourism where you would go to your own summer cottage, you would perhaps go to stay with friends or family. The other aspect about when we're talking about coastal and maritime tourism is that these are recreational areas. So recreational activities are very closely related to tourism
and we define recreational activities as non-work related activities undertaken by residents for leisure. So, if you think about these two things - tourism and recreational activities, there's actually no real clear distinction between them. Except that cottage owners actually feel that they live in a place even if they don't live there the whole year. They feel an affiliation to their place and care for it. So you really can't make a clear distinction between when are you just a one-time tourist and when are you someone who feels that they're closely attached to the place. If we think of the actual activities the
recreational activities, most tourists do not go to place to go into let's say a hotel room or cottage and binge watch Netflix or something. They're there to engage in what is around them and so they interact or become a part of the recreational opportunities in that place. But just to say that because you're a tourist you don't necessarily engage 100 % in recreational activities. I'm just going to give you also a lot of examples of what specifically is coastal and marine activities what's special about coastline marine tourism. The specific activities can include just walking along the coast and just spending time on the coast activities like sailing, yachting, boating kayaking, canoeing - all sorts of trips on the water where you're in a vessel. It includes activities like lying on the beach, bathing, that can also include something like going around collecting rocks or anything else specific that's on the beach. Then there's an aspect of boating life
not so much the boating itself of being on the water but the whole culture of living on a boat being in harbours, being there for your leisure. Then there's the whole, and this is quite a large area of recreational fishing, this can be putting your rod in the water from a jetty or perhaps standing on the beach and fishing from the beach but also going out into a small boat and fishing closer, longer than from the shore. There's also hunting, although limited. Another group of cultural marine activities are cultural activities along the coast. Most of this would include some sort of cultural heritage whether on the coast or underwater. Another group is all the nature-based activities that you do along the coast. This is where you utilize all the natural resources that
are in the coastal zone, whether it's on land or in the shallow water. On land this would include bird watching, watching the migratory seasons of birds. Yet another group of activities is surfing and all sorts of other wind sports. Anything that's related to the interaction of wind and
the movement of the water, the surf. And yet another group are the outdoor sports. There's been a huge development in outdoor activities, strenuous, sometimes extreme sports activities but also more leisurely activities like hiking. Another group is underwater activities this would include anything pertaining to snorkelling, diving, scuba diving, spending time under the water specifically and related to the before mentioned sailing and boating, and kayaking etc. There's also a lot of motorized water activities. It isn't just boats but all sorts of water scooters anything like that would also be included in this type of activity. Then there's the actual staying overnight on the coast. In many places this is not allowed but there is some camping right on the coast and also of course illegal stays in your sleeping bag on the beach is also an activity.
And finally sometimes cruise tourism. It's a huge industry is not actually considered as part of coastal maritime tourism but more as a shipping industry or an industry in and of itself, but it is very related of course to coastal marine tourism. I'm going to say a little bit about the characteristics of coastal and marine tourism specifically in the Baltic Sea Region. I have a bit of specific number statistics on the Baltic Sea Region tourism industry. They're from 2016, there are some newer numbers of course for newer statistics but these do not pertain jointly to the Baltic Sea Region. So I've chosen to use this report that was made in 2016. It looks into the whole region as one big you might call it a super destination or a macro destination where we look at all the countries around the full Baltic Sea. And that whole area in 2016 generated
more than 88 million international arrivals. So arrivals is a number of people who arrive into the region internationally. And that was growth of more than 10% since 2014, and that has just kept growing since. Then also, as I've said before we often register overnight stays more than arrivals in tourism and if you count the number of overnight stays in the region more than 220 million overnight stays were registered in 2016. Again a rise of almost 10% from 2014. Out of these, 54 million overnight stays were by international visitors. This equals 24 % of all the overnight stays, and again that's also on the rise. So the aspect of international visitors coming into Baltic Sea countries is on the rise.
The number also means that 75 % of all overnight stays are actually domestic tourists. So the Baltic Sea is also a great destination for people from the rest of the country who want to spend time on the coast or in maritime environments and therefore go to these holiday destinations. If we look at the number of jobs provided by tourism, it's just under 640 000 persons who work in tourism, and it's very important to notice that I said in directly provided jobs. In tourism, we often talk about the direct effects of tourism and the indirect effects of tourism. The direct effects of tourism are people who work in the tourism industry. So accommodation, restaurants, tourism experiences, all sorts of service providers.
When we talk about the indirect jobs, they're the jobs generated by the indirect effects of a person working in the tourism industry who then goes into the local grocery shop and buys food for the money that he or she has earned with her tourism wages. The jobs generated in the local supermarket are not included in this number. So, it's a lot larger than this actually and if we look at who are the visitors then if the Baltic Sea Region is considered a macro destination, as I've started to talk about, a majority of its international tourism is actually within the Baltic Sea Region. So we visit each other, we go to each other's countries, we go to each other's coastal areas, and so the largest group of visitors across the whole Baltic Sea Region are the Germans, followed by people from Poland the Danes - us from Denmark, Swedes and then Lithuanians. I just want to pick up a little bit about the labour market again. As I said before,
I put here 650 000 jobs generated. It was 640 000 jobs in 2016 that has been on the rise. So today about 650 000 jobs. The largest labour market within the Baltic Sea Region is actually along the regions in the German Baltic Sea coast where more than 180 000 people are employed directly in tourism. This is followed by Sweden but whereas Germany is just the Baltic Sea coast regions in Sweden this is all of Sweden, and Sweden has a 173 000 employees employed directly in tourism. But again that's the whole country, whereas in Germany 180 000 is only along the Baltic Sea coast.
And again be aware that I'm talking only about direct impact of GDP and employment not the indirect impact, so the actual numbers are a lot higher. So now I'm going to go quickly into each of the countries. I prepared quite a bit of text but I'm not going to be reading all of the text for you. Just giving you an idea of the tourism industry in each of the countries that are involved in sea plan space. So I'm not going to go into every country along the Baltic coast. I'm not going to be talking about Finland, Estonia, Latvia
or the Russian Federation but about Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Lithuania. Just giving you a little bit of an overview of the general tourism development in those countries, and then I'll be finishing off with a bit of a general trend in tourism development. First of all, in Denmark there is a continued growth in the number of tourist arrivals and I should say that I don't have the Covid-19 crisis in this presentation but obviously the tourism sector has been hit very hard by Covid-19 and we don't know really, we know the short-term effects which has been almost no tourism and an increase in domestic tourism, but we don't know the long-term effects. But until 2019 there was great growth in tourism arrivals in all the Baltic countries, also in Denmark. It is expected that that will pick up again once we get a little bit more control over the Covid-19 infection. If we look at Danish tourism, of all the overnights 36.5% were international
overnights. So visitors coming in internationally, and the largest groups were Germany, Sweden, Norway followed by the UK, USA. Tourism makes up for 2.2 percent of total employment in Denmark and the industry contributes to 2.2 percent of GDP. As we go into the other countries, you'll see that that is actually quite an average percentage that tourism contributes to. Again remember
this is only direct GDP, direct employment in tourism. None of the indirect effects of employment or GDP contribution are included. Denmark's tourism is branded as environmentally sustainable. So it has a strong brand in that sense but at the same time, and this is a bit of paradox, one of its weaknesses is its lack of natural resources or its quality of natural resources.
This means that there's only a limited number and size of protected natural areas. That’s because we're such a small country, so mostly all the land has been cultivated and access to large, highly untouched forests like you would have in Eastern Poland is not available in Denmark. It also means that the attractiveness of natural assets is limited. We don't have dramatic mountains or wild landscapes. It's all pretty calm, easily accessible but perhaps not as attractive as other more wild natural places. Coast and nature tourism in Denmark, as a specific sector, remains one of the largest business areas in Danish tourism. It made up 72 percent of all bed nights 2016.
If you compare that to urban tourism, we've seen a rise in coast and nature tourism by 5% up to 2015, whereas there has been an increase in urban tourism by 9%. So the general trend that we see is that both coast and nature tourism and urban tourism is on the rise but that actually urban tourism is rising quicker. Let's go to the tourism industry in the German Baltic Sea coast. Again we see a growth in the number of arrival tourists but compared to Denmark the share of international tourists is much lower. It's just under 24%,
where it was almost 37% in Denmark. So, actually if you look at the total number of arrivals this is just 10% of all arrivals. If we look specifically not at all of Germany but just the Baltic Sea coast regions, tourism employment makes out 5.4% of all employment in those regions. And if you remember before in Denmark, that was just over two percent, so this is actually a high employment rate. At the same time the Baltic Sea coast in Germany contributes to two percent of the regional GDP. So actually, we have a lot higher employment than we have GDP contribution,
which would indicate that there's a high share of persons delivering service without them actually delivering a high income or a contribution to GDP. This is different from many of the other Baltic sea regions and countries. Germany has especially in its ground and port infrastructure, meaning there is substantial access to tourist areas.
I talked before about the share of overnights of international tourists and visitors come primarily from Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK. So you see that Switzerland which doesn't have have a sea coast many of the population from Switzerland actually go to the German Baltic Sea coast when they want to have or to experience coastal tourism. If we look at the German tourists, they make up a very large share of the tourists along the Baltic Sea coast. And Mecklenburg Vorpommern is the most popular destination for domestic tourists. If you look at the spread of domestic tourists through all the regions of Germany, Mecklenburg Vorpommern receives five percent of all those tourists. I'm going now to Lithuania and will say a little bit about the tourism industry there. Again we see a growth in the number of arrival tourists, this time by almost 15 percent.
So it's really expanding and in Lithuania almost 47 percent of all overnights are international tourists. So this is the country that is actually receiving most international visitors of the ones that I'm comparing here. The tourism industry contributes to employment in all of Lithuania by under two percent and the same is true of tourism's contribution to Lithuania's GDP, and this is quite average. Lithuania has a strength in its ground and port infrastructure. So again
access to coastal and maritime attractions is easy. Its weakness is its natural resources. Again, understood as its access to protected areas and the attractiveness of its natural assets. Lithuanian tourists, when they are international tourists, come from Belarus and the Russian Federation but their share of international tourists is actually declining, While the next countries Latvia, Germany, and Poland provide international tours into Lithuania and their shares are on the rise. I'm now going to say a little bit about tourism industry in Sweden. There's a growth in the number of arrival tourists also here by almost 13 percent and we see this as repeated across all the Baltic Sea countries that there is a growth in the number of tourist arrivals. This is also true of the overnight days of international tourists. It's 25% in Sweden and rising. In Sweden tourism contributes to employment by 3.5 % of all employed and its contribution to GDP is 2.4%. So it is a little bit higher in Sweden than in other countries both in terms of
employment and in GDP, Its strength is its brand of environmental sustainability, while again its weakness is its natural resource management and also its relative price competitiveness. Its largest visitor groups come from Norway, Germany, Denmark, the UK and the Netherlands. It has a specific tourism strategy for the Baltic sea coast and it focuses on landscape and cultural tourism and active tourism. So that's a very integrated part of the development that's going on in the Baltic Sea Region. Finally, I'm going to say a little bit about the tourism industry in the Polish Baltic Sea coast and I won't even attempt to pronounce the names of the two regions or the voivodoships - you can read it on the slide. Again, compare the numbers that I have told you about
from Denmark, Sweden and Lithuania they are for the whole country but for Germany and Poland it's just the regions on the Baltic Sea coast that I'm telling you about today. And again we see a growth in the number of arrival tourists, this time by 17% which is relatively high. 18% of all its overnights are international tourists. The share of tourism employment in the Baltic Sea Region is 2.1% which is fairly average, as is tourism's contribution to GDP, it's just under two percent.
One of the strengths of Polish Baltic Sea coast region tourism is its price competitiveness. It's relatively cheap to travel there, and also it's known for its international openness. It has a weakness in its ground and port infrastructure meaning that there might be access issues to coastal and maritime activities, and also of its quality of some of its natural resources. If we look at the visitors, the international visitors who come into the Polish Baltic Sea coast region, Germany stands out, as by far the largest share of international tourists come from Germany. Then it's followed by visitors from the Russian Federation, Sweden, the UK
and Denmark. Again, as we saw in Lithuania, the Russian Federation visitors are declining while the visitors from Sweden, the UK and Denmark are on the rise. So the overall picture of all of that is an increase in tourism in numbers. In the number of overnight stays and in the international share of tourists. In the previous slides I was looking into each country. In this slide I want to take a little bit of a cross-cut and look at different sub-sectors of tourism across the whole area and look into the development trends. So, if we don't look at country by country but at mass tourism as such, defined as high volumes of visitors coming in with a relatively low average spending potential, and we look at the development trend, we see that yes more tourists are coming in but we're not actually expanding the spatial use for that type of tourism. We're not expanding areas
where we have mass tourism in the Baltic region. What we do see is an intensified use of the spaces that we use for tourism. So, what's happening is an intensification of tourism spaces. This is everywhere but it's particularly along the coast. What that means is that there are impacts
on the sea environment and the water quality in particular and puts environmental pressure on land. These are among the factors that really deserve special attention when you're doing MSP processes. Sub-sector that we could look at within tourism, is the construction of infrastructure and the development of different tourism services. They're on the increase. When you intensify the use of a space you also intensify the need for infrastructure in those spaces and the supply of services. What we see is a growing success of more high-end tourism, more quality tourism, where visitors don't just want access to the beach but want access to particular experiences and particular services. That also means that they demand products that
need new infrastructure or that have a high level of services related to them. Again, this intensifies the use of space. The third sub-sector that I want to look into is niche tourism. This is it's a little bit related to what I was saying before about the very specific added value services, but it might also be the specific use of locations. Again, this is on the increase.
If you see for example, an increase in bird migration, tourism people who have money to actually follow specific bird migration patterns, who come into an area, they don't want to stay in a cheap hotel in coastal town, they want a specific accommodation that's as close to where the birds stay overnight or fly over, and this makes them demand specific locations and access to specific locations. This of course is likely to impact places that might be especially highly sensitive and that requires specific infrastructure and specific solutions, and this is in the coastal zone. So, this can both be on land and over water but it also means that we really have to plan natural and protected areas. All of this together is about tourism products and their diversification. So we're progressively diversifying the tourism product in specific locations. We're trying to intensify, don't just go to any beach, there might be particular bathing tourism beaches that have themes, sport fishing is developing into very specific products where visitors are coming in and demand very specific services. All of this involves spatial conflicts among specific tourist segments at the local level.
So, in summary what we can look at is what anticipated tourism industry developments that are relevant for maritime spatial planning processes. So summing up, first of all the expected continued growth of coastal tourism. This has implications for on and offshore spatial planning. There's a need for new infrastructure and port development. This might be something like growth in the existing number of marinas, it can be a growth along different types of hotel and tourism accommodation along the coast. As I was saying before also particular types of accommodation related to the types of tourism activities that people come to experience. And a diversification
of the tourist product which requires increased mobility between activities, between those products. This again will also affect the spatial needs of how much space is tourism taking up, how intense is that spatial use. That brings me to the second aspect which is the environmental impacts of tourism in and of itself, but also of other sectors. Tourism is known for its negative
environmental impact. A lot of that has to do with the travelling itself to get to the destination, but it also has to do with that we lead quite hedonistic lives while we're tourists. We eat better food, more expensive food than we're used to. We buy more products, we go shopping, we buy well let's just call it, unnecessary things because you're in a nice place and you're on holiday, and as we say in Denmark your wallet is loose in your pocket. This of course has a high environmental impact but at the same time tourism is very dependent on the environmental conditions in the location and especially it's very dependent on water quality. So, there's a close interaction between the dependency of tourism on good environment but also the negative impacts of tourism on the environment. As I was saying before, this sort of interaction, close interaction
between space use on land and sea, which might turn into conflicts because of a lack of space, because of overcrowding. So, that is an issue that needs to be addressed in MSP. Then, there's the issue of adaption to climate change. Coastal areas might be affected by a number of climate change related impacts - flooding, erosion, increased drought. These can have direct or indirect effects on coastal maritime tourism. It might also be necessary to put up coastal defence systems,
which again will impact the spatial needs of tourism. So again planning is very much required. On the other hand, tourism might also contribute to MSP. Experience of being a tourist potentially, and I really stress this is potential, this is not something that's going on now but this is something that tourism could expand on, is its ability to affect or nudge people's understanding of environments, of natural resources and of sustainability. That through the use of natural resources in a coastal zone or in a maritime zone, marine zone, tourists can actually rather go from just using those spaces for relaxation and recreation, to actually the tourism product becoming a learning platform. The tourists can learn something from or about
natural resources whilst they're being tourists, so to speak. So there's actually potential in tourism to help enhance the sustainability of spatial use. Now I'm going to go into the MSP process, looking at different sectors. What planning needs are there in different sub-sectors of tourism?
What part of coastal marine tourism has different MSP needs? My first example of MSP needs is the cruise industry. The cruise industry is a major component of coastal and maritime tourism sector. As a sector, it is mainly composed of very large enterprises within boating and shipping, and it also has very large interest groups within the tourism sector itself. Another very large stakeholder are all the ports where the cruise ships come. They are all organized in the International Maritime Organization, the IMO, which is responsible for regulations, globally of safety and environmental considerations of all shipping. So they are also a major stakeholder. If we look at the conflicts and coexistence aspects of the
cruise industry, it's important to note that the cruise industry is particularly difficult to plan. As with all tourism products, it has a season and there is a seasonality aspect to its use of space. But because it is an industry that is in wild development almost, it's very difficult from one season to the next to expect a repeat of the same cruises going to the same ports. The product is under development, so it changes from year to year. It's very difficult to
plan its coexistence with other users of sea space because it's mobile but also because it changes itineraries which ports it calls on. Also this is not just a question of planning space but it's also a navigational hazard. Then there's a whole aspect of cruise tourism which has to do with the interaction between land and sea. There is a great competition among destinations also in the Baltic area, between becoming a home port and becoming a port of call for cruise ships. A home port is where the crew should leave from the first time where it gets the tourists to arrive. Usually they arrive perhaps the day before or several days before the cruise is expected to leave, so they spend seven times more money in the home port than in any port of calls along the way. So that's a great competitive angle between ports in the Baltic Sea Region
and they compete against each other. Then there are all the navigation and safety regulations which also affect their choice of ports and itineraries, and which shift from year to year. Some of the IMO regulations which have to do with shipping lines, regulating anchorage areas have also been affected by the development of new offshore infrastructures, such as wind farms. So the cruise industry needs through MSP processes to become aware of new offshore infrastructures, and planning where can those infrastructures be located in the future, compared to where can the cruise shipping routes be in the future. So there is a grave need for MSP planning here. Let's look at some of the environmental aspects of the cruise tourism industry. They are quite
substantial and the environmental impacts include habitat loss, this can be the loss of fishing and spawning grounds due to the building of coastal infrastructures, new ports due to dredging and due to anchoring. The impacts also include degradation of water quality through sewage and grey water discharges from the cruises, taking in and throwing out of ballast water, and also most waste on cruises is incinerated and that puts ash into the air which also affects the environment. Cruise ships can also introduce invasive species that they bring from other seas. The cruise ships can strike marine mammals and there are the problems of both noise and air pollution. And finally, as I started to say they disturbed the spawning and nursery fish habitats which is such a fragile element in the Baltic Sea. However, having said that, the cruise industry has greatly improved its practice and has reduced its environmental impact over the years, but there's no denying that it has an impact. Finally, it's important to realize the great land-sea interaction
that especially pertains to the cruise industry. When a cruise ship arrives in a port, it might have 1800 tourists that disembark into a small town with perhaps 10 000 or 15 000 residents, and they have great impact on the local environment. Even if it's only for three hours they completely changed the landscape of where they disembark and crowd control is necessary.
Okay, I'm going to go on to the second example of an area, a sub-area of coastal tourism and maritime tourism that needs to be well integrated in the MSP process. This is the recreational boating and marinas area. Again, this is a substantial activity across the Baltic Sea and if we talk about stakeholders, the boating industry consists mainly of small and medium-sized enterprises. It also supports many EU economies indirectly through manufacturing industries, building and maintaining coastal infrastructures, and providing all sort associated services.
So, compared to the cruise industry that had some very large stakeholders, very global actors this is small and medium, local and national actors. Like cruise tourism, recreational boating and marinas is a seasonal activity but where cruise tourism will be mostly during the summer months this is more, yes a summer month activity but also is a weekend activity and a public holiday one, and it is also very event-based. There are a number of recreational boating competitions that will bring out a lot of people at one time. So the spatial needs have very, you could say irregular pulse. People come in and out of the area quite irregularly. Recreational boating requires very high water quality and requires a marine biodiversity.
It also requires quite a bit of infrastructure - access to marinas, to boat ramps, to moorings. It also requires safety in terms of navigational space. When you look at MSP and the coexistence and competition aspects of MSP, we can say the following. First of all, boating and marinas need space for development. There is development in the number of marinas and the size of marinas. There's a need for access to the waterfront, safe navigation and there is a distinct danger of overcrowding. In MSP boating and marinas need to cooperate
with other mobile users of sea space i.e. users who are in and off the water. This includes different types of boating yachts, motorized vessels, personal watercraft and this again requires planning and communication. There is a need to communicate also not just with the mobile users but with permanent structures. This includes agriculture farms, oil and gas platforms, offshore windmills. The increasing number of offshore infrastructures
has also created safety concerns for boating. Marine environmental impact is limited. It's definitely there but compared to big actors like cruise tourism it is limited, relatively limited. However, management through MSP would and should contain things like making zoning plans for that, to have spatial or temporal restrictions of use of the water. It might be a good idea to plan for mooring buoys rather than having anchors in all sorts of places which is environmentally unwanted.
It also might be a good idea to plan for speed restrictions or to have perhaps no wake zones, to limit coastal erosion. So, these are some of the aspects that an MSP process with the boating and marina industry should include. On the other hand, there might be some synergies that could be planned and this would especially be between the MPAs, the marine protected areas and recreational boating because MPAs can deliver high water quality and it's also important that the negative boating effects can be mitigated through MSP management. So again, a veryimportant area to make sure that MSP management is active. The third example is underwater cultural heritage. This encompasses all traces of human existence that lays under the water, and that have some sort of cultural or historical character. It can include wrecks, ruins and also
submerged landscapes. If we talk about stakeholders or interest groups in this, we have UNESCO, a huge global actor and the International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage. We also have local and national stakeholders. These could be in the forms of museums and universities, research centers, local record offices and national monument archives. It might also include a number of small and medium-sized enterprises directly within the tourism industry, for example scuba diving excursions and other providers of services that make it possible for tourists to visit these underwater cultural heritage sites. If we look at the MSP process and how it can contribute
with coexistence and competition, we have to be aware that there can be both environmental and human threats to underwater cultural heritage. Coastal and offshore infrastructure, such as the building of ports, coastal defence systems, cables and pipelines, offshore wind farms, and oil and gas platforms, as their being built they are a danger of ruining forever underwater cultural heritage sites. But it might also be mobile things, such as trawling, dredging or anchoring that disturb the seabed, that can pose a threat. If we look at the synergies and the management measures, again possible through MSP processes, we can see a synergy that's possible. The development of local museums and exhibitions based on local maritime history, the development of diving and the development of maritime protected areas. We can also turn around and say that the
presence of underwater cultural heritage protects or can potentially protect the marine environment from other seabed disturbances, for example by making it unlawful to trawl in the area where there is an underwater cultural heritage site. Many archaeological artifacts have in fact created habitats for different marine species. There's also the possibility of planning for data sharing and making synergies out of data sharing. So, when archaeologists and marine biologists collect data
from the underwater cultural heritage sites they can share them, and becoming aware of those sharing possibilities is also something that an MSP process can facilitate. Due to constant technological development there might be cultural heritage sites that we ruin today because we cannot detect them, and therefore allowing for a better serving with archaeological components when you plan for different types of construction of infrastructure. The fourth example is recreational fisheries and pesca-tourism. We can talk about three types overall of recreational fisheries. One is amateur fishing, for example my husband would be such a person, unorganized groups of hobby fisher men and women hope to catch fish. Sometimes the hope is greater than the reward. Then there are the sports fishermen who are organized in associations. They compete against each other
on catch size and amount, and they generate quite a bit of event-based activities. Then there's tourism-fishing where a third party organizes a trip for tourists, often with commercial fishermen. This is called pesca-tourism, or it might be by recreational fishermen on charter boats. Most of this activity takes place between three and four kilometres from the coast and out to about 30 kilometres, but it varies and it's highly seasonal. Fishing sites where they're located depend on fishing quality, access, also depends on costs. It depends on port
facilities, of course on water environmental qualities, and as well with the ability to interact with fishermen and with regulations. Recreational fishermen if we talk about how they might be affected by using the same space, is highly related to if MPAs marine protected areas are closed from usage completely then that will affect recreational fishermen especially. There are quite a lot of issues about coexistence and competition relating to recreational fisheries and what can be planned through MSP processes. Some of the main conflicts relate to access to space
and especially its impacts on fish stocks. There have been reports that recreational fishing has a lot of much greater impact on fish stocks than it was generally assumed. So they actually take out a greater share of fish than was made aware earlier. So, it's not a small, insignificant tourism sector, it's something that you have to be aware of. Offshore infrastructures can create spatial conflicts.
There are safety radiuses around many of these infrastructures where recreational fishing cannot take place. There might be areas of marine protected areas where it's not allowed to fish so-called non-take MPAs, and they can inhibit recreational fishing. It also doesn't always have a positive effect because it can also displace recreational fisheries into surrounding areas which are then pressured because of over-fishing. There are also potential conflicts between commercial and recreational fisheries if they target the same species in the same location. This is especially exacerbated if regulations that apply to commercial fishing i.e. quotas,
don't apply to recreational fishing. As I’ve said before, recreational fishing may be underestimated and not taking into account in calculation of commercial fishing quotas. Other negative impacts related to the activity are littering and damages to the seabed by anchors of these recreational fishery vessels. So, an MSP management process could include something like recreational quotas concerning size, species, locations, but also regulations on the fishing gear used because much of it is not sustainable and it puts a lot of plastic into the sea. Important synergies also exist between recreational fisheries and marine protected areas. MPAs can increase both the number and the size of fish and are therefore especially attractive for these recreational fisheries. There are synergies that can be organized with shared infrastructures,
recreational fisheries and cultural heritage, also on land heritage related to fishing communities. So, there's a good reason, putting it very simply, to talk together across these different sectors and plan the use of space. To summarize, I've had these four examples. I've shownsome of the potential conflicts between different sub-sectors within tourism but also between different sub-sectors of tourism and non-tourism activities using the same space, the same coastal space, the same marine spaces. Based on that it's very easy to see that having MSP processes can benefit the tourism sector in a number of ways. I am pointing out three particular areas.
One is the process of stakeholder participation which is one of the very important aspects of maritime spatial planning. Another is the protection of the marine environment which is also a part of MSP. And finally the third is better integration of land-sea interaction. Stakeholder participation, consulting relevant stakeholders early in the planning process should, ideally at least, ensure that especially the more marginal activities in the tourism sector are included in the process. Such a process should identify important areas and characteristics for each activity and allow for the identification of possible mitigation measures.
Mapping of activities and where they take place in terms of location space but also temporally in terms of when they take place. Those dimensions, especially when they're mobile, when they take place only for a certain time or they move around is a prerequisite. You have to map these activities. If it's not mapped, essentially it doesn't exist and therefore it cannot become a part of the MSP process. So, we know a lot about, for example, oil and gas platforms are positioned because they're not mobile and they're permanent activities, but we don't know so much about how tours actually use the space that they come to visit. So ideally, marine spatial planning can act
as a tool to make that use transparent and it can be an important part of stakeholder participation, so that by involving tourism stakeholders in the MSP process, they become visible to other sectors, for example, shipping. This is made very difficult by the fact that the tourism sector as I've shown is extremely diverse. It has very highly fragmented activities. They might use the same space but the way they use it and its impact on those spaces is very differentiated.
The stakeholders involved are very diverse. Some are large global actors, some are small local enterprises, and this is really a challenge when developing MSP and takes a lot of resources if you don't want to just have an ideal desktop MSP process but one that actually takes place. Where users interact and plan together. In real life planning is not always ideal, an example is from Denmark where the whole aspect of Blue Recreation and you could also say tourism as part of that, have complained that they have not been heard at all in becoming MSP laws. So, it is a real problem
in many countries around the Baltic but also in many sea regions that tourism as a sector is not very well represented in the MSP processes. The second area that I'm going to talk about is the protection of marine environment. Maritime activities have often been developed on a sectoral basis with little consideration for uses in other sectors, and not at all for the cumulative effects or impacts on all the activities together on the marine environment. So each sector has tended to have its own development trajectory and its own visibility of how it's impacting the environment. Jointly this has led to the deterioration of sea water quality and the loss of marine biodiversity.
We've been aware now for decades that a holistic approach is needed. Coastal maritime tourism they depend on the preservation of the marine environment and therefore they will benefit from a more integrated approach than what we've been able to organize so far. Such integrated approach involves interaction between different sectors and between land and sea use. MSP can facilitate development of coherent networks of marine protected areas
and so instead of having just national marine protected areas, having a series of them across different countries you can maximize their benefits. Again, we must be aware that there is a divergence between the ideal MSP processes and reality protection of marine environment as part of MSP processes does not come automatically. It's something that we have to work with. The third area is improvement of integration between land and sea interactions that the MSP process allows. Coherence between territorial and maritime planning is required in order to give access to the coastline for the development of coastal and maritime tourism, and the development of coastal infrastructures, and this is both in the sea and on land. When you build offshore infrastructures you
also affect the coastal zone, both environmentally but also aesthetically after it's built, especially, if it's close to the shore. There's a need to plan the coastline into more natural areas to plan the positioning of residential areas, culture and urban spaces. All in one big integrated aspect, related to the development of maritime uses. We know, especially from tourism and recreational use, that areas that have been planned on land as natural areas will also affect how we use the sea. Whereas highly dense areas in urban areas, where the tourism type is a type of mass tourism, there's also a different use of the sea connected to that. In fact, we know that we can make a typology of tourism destinations based on accommodation forms.
So, if we plan the land based on accommodation forms, we also know something about how the marine environment is going to be used. If we look at typology of accommodation, we can see four types. One is rented summer homes. These are areas where summer homes are located next to each other, and they bring in visitors who stay in summer homes. They use the areas that they are located in extensively. They are there to use the beach and the coast area, and the marine spaces, as well. It's often very seasonal and highly intensive when they're there.
Destinations which primarily consist of private summer homes have a very different usage. It's also people who are not there all year round, who come in, they are also seasonal users but they are there for the long term and many of them feel like part of the local environment, part of the locality. They use the space less intensively, often they are against development of those areas and would prefer them to be as pristine and as natural as possible. If there's a cultural heritage for example, an old fishing community, they advocate for keeping that cultural heritage intact.
So they use the space very differently from the rented summer home destinations. Then we have destinations that are based on tourists coming in for experiences and attractions. They usually stay in hotels and it's often a dense use of space. They are not so much looking for natural attractions,
as they are looking for organized tourism products. And the fourth type of destination are urban coastal towns, also based very much on visitors coming in with a high spending on restaurants and accommodations, many in hotels. They use the proximate beach areas very densely and may be more orientated towards the use of the coastal town more than the natural resources that the area has to offer. So, we see a destination typology based on accommodation forms. That means that land planning has a huge impact on the use of marine spaces and the coasts related to that.
Coastal and maritime tourism in the MSP process and why it's so important for tourism that we take the MSP process seriously, and that we engage in the MSP process as tourism stakeholders. The tourism sector is one of five areas identified for sustainable growth of Europe's blue economy. So tourism should be more sustainable than it is, and my argument is that the MSP is an opportunity to work towards that goal. But it doesn't come in and off itself. With establishing of the EU MSP Directive of 2014 and all the national legislation that follow, the tourism industry should increasingly, at all levels, be involved in MSP. However, tourism is not a central legal based sector like commercial fisheries, like maritime transport and shipping sector, or like the energy sector. These sectors are most directly involved in the MSP process. They are the ones who have the highest voice, and there is a danger that they hold a more central status than some of the softer users of coastal and marine space, like recreational use or tourism use. However, the EU MSP process has stipulated that as a minimum,
each Member State should have the following aspects as part of the national MSP processes. They must involve stakeholders. They must develop cross-border cooperation. They must apply an ecosystem-based approach, and they must take land-sea interaction into account. They must also promote the coexistence of different coastal and marine activities.
Tourism ticks all those boxes. The tourism sector needs to be involved at the stakeholder level. They need to interact in cross-border cooperation. They need to apply an ecosystem-based approach. They need to take land-sea interaction into account, and they need to plan for the coexistence of coastal and maritime activities. So, collectively that means that MSP as EU directive but also as
national legislation, gives the tourism sector great opportunities for making themselves visible, for engaging in MSP processes and interacting with other actors locally and regionally, and internationally. So we really need to advocate for a more central place, for the planning of tourism and using the MSP as a platform for that. Tourism does not necessarily have great influence automatically on the MSP process. It is a perpetual process, planning is never done, and if in the current MSP national plan tourism doesn't have a great place, there's always room for expansion, always room for more stakeholder interaction, room for more mapping of tourism activities, and therefore for greater planning of tourism development.
If you have any questions or comments you are very welcome to contact me at this email address and a bibliography of the resources I have used to make this presentation are available at the SEAPLANSPACE website. Thank you.
2021-09-25 23:16
