Policy Day 2007

Preceding the People and the Sea IV Conference: ‘ Who Owns the Coast’

 

Marine Protected Areas: 5 years since Johannesburg – integrating social needs into policy

Download the programme.

 

Date: Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Time: 8.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.

Venue: Waalse Kerk (opening and morning programme) and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (afternoon programme).

Rationale

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 put marine restoration and protection on the international agenda. Participants in this event agreed to establish a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPA), covering fifteen percent of the world’s oceans, by 2015. Now that we are five years down the road, the first evaluation of the progress made is called for.

MPAs are established for the conservation of biodiversity and the restoration of marine ecosystems. They do so by imposing limits on human activities.  From the viewpoint of the international agenda this is a necessary step. The people living in the surroundings, however, do not always share the same view. For them, MPAs frequently present a nuisance that limits their mobility and deprive them of livelihoods. Faced with these reservations, MPA managers have taken steps to include social concerns in their planning, albeit with variable success.

This policy day focuses on the social dimensions of MPA governance in a global perspective. It aims to gather an international audience of policymakers, academics, and civil society groups, for a cutting edge debate on topics relevant to North and South. The timing is pertinent also for the European and Dutch MPA policy agendas, which are in a formative phase.

Policy day statements highlighting key issues will be formatted into a policy brief, to be distributed to all participants.

The policy day precedes and feeds into the MARE People and the Sea Conference IV (5-7 July, 2007), entitled Who owns the coast?

Ecost/CEMARE (see www.ecostproject.org) is the co-organizer of this policy day, which is one in a series.

Programme

The day will be chaired and opened by Ratana Chuenpagdee (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada).

We are proud to present our speakers:

 

Dr. Patricio Bernal (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission)

Mr. Vivek Vivekanandan (South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies) view presentation

Dr. Pierre Failler (CEMARE, University of Portsmouth, UK) view presentation

Dr. Poul Degnbol (European Commission, DG Fisheries & Maritime Affairs) view presentation

Prof. Wim Wolff (Groningen University) view presentation

 

The afternoon programme consists of workshops and a forum discussion on accomplishments since the Johannesburg Declaration and the way to better integrate social needs in MPA policy, in North and South

 

Click here to download the programme.