How supportive are existing national legal regimes for multi-use marine spatial planning?—The South African case

Discussing and Analyzing “Maritime Cohesion” in MSP, to Achieve Sustainability in the Marine Realm

“…However, through the literature review a series of challenging characteristics of the multi-use MSP process are evident. Almost all authors agree that MU MSP is governed by increased complexity [34], since it involves different actors and groups with different interests and different perceptions of the sea space. There is, also, a subjective understanding and different considerations about opportunities or risks.…”

“…Zaucha [7] also argues that multi-use can motivate clustering of maritime activities and this seems a natural but also promising effect to support social capital related cohesion on land and sea. A comprehensive analysis for defining multi-use MSP is made by Taijjard and Van Niekerk [34] who view multi-use MSP as based on six different key paradigms mostly inspired by the integrated environmental management: The "spatial planning" paradigm, which is the most obvious and prominent; the "objectives-based management" paradigm; the "ecosystem-based approach" paradigm, which is the underpinning principle of MSP in general; the "adaptive management" paradigm which is, as already mentioned, reaffirmed by Christie et al [33] and of course the "participatory rational decision-making" and the "cooperative environmental governance" ones. It is thus obvious that there are mixed "spatial planning" and "management/governance" related paradigms behind the MU MSP.…”

“…It is widely acknowledged that there are multiple understandings of the sea. Beyond the classical considerations of the sea, mostly deriving from the EU policies and directives, as an economic space frequently opposed to its quality as a natural space and a space susceptible to environmental degradation [33,66,67] or even a geographic space [68,69] as opposed to the "mare liberum" related reflections [66,68,70], one can consider the sea as a "physically tangible area" [33] which can be subject to rational, realistic and adjusted decisions in planning whilst there is also a perception of the sea as a "relational and constructed space" [34,71].…”

“…The term "multi-use maritime spatial planning" (MU MSP) is rarely met in the literature [32][33][34][35][36] and the current article focuses on the idea that MU MSP is a key vehicle towards cohesive planning and for introducing a new concept in sustainable development of the marine space, namely the concept of "maritime cohesion" [36]. Although the Marine Spatial Planning Directive (EC, 2014) encourages, in principle, "multi-purpose" uses within national policies and legislation, the existing literature [31,33,34] shows that relevant institutional settings on a national level are, with only a few exceptions [31,37], insufficient to encourage the co-location process, and planners rarely consider this concept as a "must" for the elaboration of Maritime Spatial Plans. However, the idea of the multiple use of marine space was cited as early as in 2009 by Douvere [38], while examining the marine spatial planning progress.…”

Institutional Mapping Towards Developing a Framework for Sustainable Marine Spatial Planning

“…Most scholars have agreed that sustainability is built by three main pillars; ecological, economic and social (Sala et al, 2015;Inglés et al, 2015;Röckmann et al, 2015;Heffernan, 2015;Taljaard and Niekerk, 2013;Portman, 2015;Gopnik et al, 2012;Madu and Kuei, 2012;Portman, 2011 andStocker andKennedy, 2009) as illustrated in Figure 4. The element of economic represents the ability of current plan to achieve economic growth and achieving objectives for marine resources (Blackstock et al, 2015;Carter, 2014;Carneiro, 2013 andCalado et al, 2012).…”