Progress report: 3rd workshop
PISCES held its third workshop on 14-15 June, 2011. PISCES Stakeholders, the Advisory Group and government representatives came together in Dinard, France to refine the PISCES guidelines.
Workshop objectives
By the end of the June 2011 workshop in France, the stakeholder participants would:
- Clearly understand the progress of the PISCES project so far, and the role of the workshop
- Continue to build mutual understanding and working relationships between participants; quickly integrating new members.
- Gain a deeper understanding of ecosystem approaches in other contexts, and what can be learned from them.
- Produce a coherent set of guidelines that clearly describes a recommended ecosystem approach management system for the Celtic Sea*.
- Increase understanding of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive implementation process.
- Identify what needs to happen between June 2011 and the next workshop.
Workshop attendees
The attendees were composed principally of Celtic Sea* marine users, drawn from a cross-sectoral group which includes interests from shipping, ports, fishing, coastal tourism and recreation, mariculture, environmental statutory agencies, marine aggregates, renewable energy and undersea cables. The PISCES project operates a flexible stakeholder group (of around 25-30 people), acknowledging that effective stakeholder engagement needs to be dynamic and adaptive. Approximately half of these PISCES stakeholders who have agreed to participate in the PISCES project were able to attend the workshop. The refined guidelines will be shared with those stakeholders who were unable to participate for their review and so that they will be able to feed into the ongoing process of the guidelines development.
Also attending the June 2011 workshop to provide input and support to the marine users’ discussions were a range of advisers. This included EU and national government officials, representatives from other ecosystem-based marine management initiatives and members of the PISCES Advisory Group.
Workshop outcomes
During the workshop, participants:
- Reviewed and refined the draft guidelines, explored linkages between ecosystem principles and objectives for marine management, and the actions needed to deliver these.
- Agreed next steps for drafting the work into text for wider communication with, and review by, other stakeholders.
- Gained further knowledge of other ecosystem-based marine management initiatives, including stakeholder-led projects, to enhance understanding of how the approach could work in the Celtic Sea* context.
- Advised the PISCES project team how best to support the further involvement and outreach to wider stakeholders within their sectors.
- Undertook collaborative working with a range of other sectors and nationalities.
Next steps
PISCES stakeholders, supported by the PISCES project team will be involved in the following key activities:
- Development and review of draft text for the guidelines (as refined at the June 2011 workshop) to share more widely with other marine users.
- Utilisation of communication channels within each marine user sector to achieve wider outreach and dissemination of the draft guidelines for wider review and feedback.
- Preparation for a fourth workshop, which is expected to focus on further refinement of the guidelines, including action planning at the sectoral scale, in the autumn of 2011.
* includes Western Channel