1. Engaging stakeholders in the Celtic Seas in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive
Dr Lyndsey Dodds
Celtic Seas Partnership Project Manager
Twitter/celticseaspartnership

2. PISCES: Partnership Involving Stakeholders in the Celtic Sea Ecosystem

3. Improving stakeholder participation
Encouraging stakeholders to implement their own solutions
Greater communication between stakeholders and governments
Mechanisms for integrated marine management

4. Celtic Seas Partnership
Four year EC LIFE+ funded project (until December 2016)
WWF-UK led with University of Liverpool, NERC-BODC, SeaWeb and Southern and Eastern Regional Assembly (Ireland)
Builds on successful PISCES project.

5. Aim of project
To support the delivery of Good Environmental Status in the Celtic Seas, by facilitating engagement between sectors and across borders to ensure the long term future of the environment, while safeguarding people’s livelihoods and the communities that have a relationship with the sea.

6. Why? Recognise benefits of stakeholder engagement
Support objectives of MSFD
Recognise benefits and challenges of regional management
Identified gap for cross-sectoral, multi-national engagement
Experience from PISCES and other initiatives
Ecosystem approach and regional management
Experience from PISCES: Increased support and understanding
Increased input of knowledge, data and information
Increased integration and coordination
Builds trust and creates a community

7. What we’re trying to achieve:
Increase stakeholder understanding of marine policy
Build & develop relationships between sectors and countries
Influence management practices
Increase stakeholder involvement in marine policy and decision-making
Improve the availability of information at Celtic Seas scale.

8. Development of measures
Working with stakeholders to develop measures
Using workshops, online surveys, and expert advice to develop ideas and identify priority areas based on stakeholder interests and current gaps/weaknesses
Measures will be fed into government consultations and/or taken forward by stakeholders
I’m going to talk in more detail about one of the key areas of our work: the development of measures by stakeholders.
Through discussions with government representatives, we decided that the key area where we can add value to the MSFD is through working with stakeholders to develop some practical and well-supported measures to achieve Good Environmental Status.
Measures will either be provided directly as recommendations to government consultations, or taken forwards as stakeholder initiatives, where there is potential to do this.

9. First step is to increase understanding…

10. Challenges
Differences between countries AND scale of engagement

11. Stakeholder fatigue – vary approach to deal with it
Also:
Specific sectoral needs for engagement vary
Challenges of working in a diverse group
Lack of economic incentive to be involved
Cost of being involved (loss of earnings/time)
Policy drivers vary across countries
Lack of a perception of a crisis or specific problem
Previous experience with stakeholder engagement projects is not always favourable

12. Differences between sectors
Leading on to resource intensive

13. Engagement to date
70 stakeholders from industry, government and academia attend first conference
6 workshops in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, England, France and Ireland attended by a total of 180 stakeholders
661 stakeholders engaged in project activities across the 6 project countries from 10 different sectors.
UK, Devolved Administrations, France and Ireland governments the EC and OSPAR sign up to ‘Celtic Seas Partnership statement of support’

14. Outcomes
Stakeholders have a better understanding of marine policy and recognise the importance of engaging with decision making
Governments recognise the role of stakeholders in supporting MSFD implementation
Better communication and coordination between sectors and countries in the Celtic Seas
Governments and industry recognise the role of regional stakeholder forums in integrated marine management.
Need this slide?

15. Recommendations Engage early and use a range of approaches
Ensure transparency and more than tick box exercise
Build in time and resources
Use existing networks/opportunities
Sub-regional stakeholder forums across Europe?

16. Genuine engagement is…
more challenging, more time consuming, more likely to give you headaches
BUT
gives better results…

18. Thank you! www.celticseaspartnership.eu Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Dr Lyndsey Dodds
Celtic Seas Partnership Project Manager
Illustrations by Kim McGillivary
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