AGENDA

The short planners meetings that took place back-to-back to the thematic and partner meetings were used to discuss about the results of the thematic meetings, to define the next steps in the project and to bring up any other pending issue that needs to be discussed among partners.

Some of the immediate reflections made from the thematic meetings include:

• There is a need to have a more integrated look on the topics (literally, lay the different map layers on top of each other).
• The topic papers can be developed further as agreed during the topic meetings. These will not be finalised but taken as working documents until the end of the project.
• Comprehensive status report based on the topic papers is probably needed.

In seeking answers about the next steps in the project, the partners discussed about the outputs of Baltic Scope. Besides those stated in the call they came up with some additional ones:

• Latvia suggested the Baltic SCOPE in itself represents a platform to discuss how the MSP takes place, share data and knowledge (national outcomes and recommendations)
• Estonia suggested the possibility to generate concrete results; such as checklists to be used when addressing cross-border issues, as well as other guidelines that can be used to achieve planning solutions.
• Sweden suggested to engage other authorities nationally, broaden the perspective, information on what one country needs to know about the other country’s interest

The decision made among partners was to focus on processes as the means to achieve planning solutions (e.g. descriptions how to tackle different issues, who are the relevant stakeholders, what are the important pre-conditions, what kind of data is needed, what is missing etc.). In this way, the results of Central Baltic case study can be used in the future in national MSP processes as well as when bringing countries together to coordinate their individual MSP processes. A Figure below shows a first ‘draft’ of what could be a model of how to address transboundary cooperation in MSP.

Another concrete output of the project is the checklists that are being currently developed by the task force as a recommendation on how to address the ecosystem-based approach in MSP.

Furthermore, the partners decided to make a compilation of the conflicts and synergies identified during the thematic meetings in a short paper, which will be useful during the next phases to find out possible solutions.

The paper elaborated on synergies and conflicts helps to better visualize the issues that have emerged so far and what kind of actions are needed to proceed. The paper also provides the first proposed solutions to these issues. The solutions are to be tested during the stakeholder conference in Jurmala, Latvia in June.

CONTACTS