Abstract
The “MSPglobal International Guide on Marine/Maritime Spatial Planning”, published in 2021, aims to support the development of marine spatial planning (MSP) processes and plans, offering practical guidance structured around different planning phases. While the “MSPglobal Guide” remains com-prehensive and valuable, it does not fully explore some topics that have gained significance and urgency due to new scientific advancements, practical experience, evolving environmental pressures and recent international commitments. Pursuing its mission to support MSP processes and plans, MSPglobal has developed this complementary Volume 2 that expand the Guide’s content to include biodiversity considerations further.
This volume emphasises the central role of biodiversity in ocean health and its contribution to ecosystem services and sustainable livelihoods. It also aims to support countries in answering the call from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to implement participatory, integrated and biodiversity inclusive spatial planning.
Developing biodiversity inclusive MSP processes requires recognising biodiversity as the foundation of sustainable development, setting specific objectives to achieve nature positive outcomes and integrating biodiversity conservation and resilience as a concern across all maritime activities. To assist governments, Indigenous Peoples and local communitieis, stakeholders and all relevant parties involved in MSP in bringing biodiversity to the forefront of the process, this volume summarises the reasons why this is crucial (Chapter 2), elaborates on the definition and key elements of biodiversity inclusive MSP (Chapter 3) and presents a set of 20 recommendations (Chapter 4).
These recommendations are organised by planning phase and are intended to complement those presented in the main Guide. Each specific recommendation includes its rationale and a set of suggested actions to support implementation. The volume is the result of expert contributions from around the world and shares insights from practical experiences and research.
Rights-holder and stakeholder engagement is a fundamental aspect throughout the MSP process, and this is reinforced in several of the specific recommendations for biodiversity inclusive MSP.