Land Sea Act: Case study on balancing the land-sea resources in the Southwestern Kurzeme Region
About this good practice
The project Land-Sea-Act aims to bring together stakeholders involved in coastal management and planning to find solutions for Maritime Spatial Planning and Blue Growth challenges around the Baltic Sea, and to elaborate the Multi-level Governance Agenda on Blue Growth and Spatial Planning in the Baltic Sea Region. The project
guides national, regional, and local authorities, as well as stakeholders of various sectors aiming to 1) improve transnational cooperation and facilitate knowledge exchange to foster the Blue Growth; 2) raise awareness, knowledge and skills to enhance the Blue
Growth initiatives and integrated development in the coastal areas; 3) balance the development of new sea uses with coastal community interests by improving the coastal governance.
Latvian case study in the coastal area of the Southwestern Kurzeme coast aims to support the sustainable development of this coastal area. The case study has proposed optimum solutions for locating offshore wind parks and tourism development within the case study area. This was achieved by (i) mapping and assessment of the coastal landscapes and ecosystem services, (ii) active stakeholder engagement in formulating coastal development challenges, values, and interests of local communities, (iii) participatory scenario building and (iv) assessing impact of the proposed scenarios to coastal ecosystems, services, and landscape.
Resources needed
Total project costs: 2.21 million EUR, including ERDF co-financing of
1.76 million EUR
Costs related to working on the Latvian case study: ~110 000 EUR. The
project team involved 3 senior experts, 2 junior experts (GIS and social surveys) and 1 communication expert.
Evidence of success
Project has the following results: 1) increased capacity and cooperation of stakeholders in the Baltic Sea Region regarding Blue Growth and spatial planning; 2) 6 case studies outputs, including the Report on strategic solutions for balanced use of land-sea resources (Latvian case study); 3) Guiding materials for various coastal stakeholders on land-sea interaction in maritime spatial planning, land-based spatial planning and addressing Blue Growth challenges.
Potential for learning or transfer
The approaches and methods tested and developed within the LandSea-Act case study in the Southwestern Kurzeme can be replicated in other parts of the country at the regional as well as, potentially, can be up-scaled at the national level or the scale of the Baltic Sea Region. For example, the approach for assessment of ecosystem services and landscape qualities can be applied in other coastal areas to support tourism development and spatial planning.
Elaboration of the framework for ecosystem service assessment, including a set of indicators and related data sets, and the algorithms for assessing impacts to ecosystem structures and provided services was time consuming iterative process. However,
the assessment framework developed by the project expert team could be relatively easy transferable to other areas, thus providing an efficient use of project results.
Further information
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