Marine environments are subject to growing pressures such as traffic, increasing demand and changing land-use of coastal areas, seabed exploitation, dredging or mining, fishing, tourism, development of renewable energies, and other. Sustainably managed oceans and seas can contribute to economic growth and employment not only in Europe but around the world, Tropical Atlantic included. Following the Galway Statement on Atlantic Cooperation, the Action Plan for a Maritime Strategy in the Atlantic Area and the joint Declaration by EU and Brazil, several events and processes are beginning to consider the Tropical Atlantic as a shared resource between the European Union (EU), Africa and Brazil. The PADDLE Consortium will be part of this new transatlantic Partnership whose aim is to develop a more inclusive Atlantic Community.
Financed by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, The PADDLE project aims to elevate policy innovation at the heart of the development of tropical marine spatial planning. It will bring together researchers and actors from countries bordering the Tropical Atlantic and from the European Union to create a network, which will build theory and create methods for a pertinent marine spatial planning (MSP) in tropical zones by means of collaborative platform.
The PADDLE project allows to build a network capable of generating innovative opportunities and identifying the limits of scientific tools to reboot the debate on the governance of tropical marine resources. To this end, PADDLE is organized in five interrelated work packages (WPs) with specific goals and deliverables:
Coordination, training and Dissemination
Key ecosystem dynamics for MSP
Policy and Governance Dynamics in MSP
Challenges and Solutions for Tropical Atlantic MSP
Collaborative platform for innovative MSP
Countries on each side of the Tropical Atlantic will be used as case studies in PADDLE (Senegal, Cape Verde, Brazil). The three countries chosen for the case studies have a strong history of fisheries, recent experience in offshore energy production, a real need to maintain artisanal fisheries, and to share exploitation of their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and continental shelves with other countries (fisheries agreement, oil exploitation, offshore wind farms). Conciliating human activities at sea generates challenges. Failures and success stories need to be shared between the case studies.
PADDLEs Specific Objectives:
1. Enhance career prospects for African, Brazilian and European academics and practitioners by building on a multidisciplinary and multicultural consortium of renewed experts in a wide range of complementary fields of expertise
2. Develop an expert network, building on existing and newly established collaborative relationships, to improve and strengthen collaboration between local and foreign scientists.
3. Share and integrate approaches and knowledge among academic and non-academic partners to develop and innovate MSP practices and instruments
4. Identify the needs and potential impacts of MSP on the societal, political and ecological dynamics in the Tropical Atlantic by consolidating existing research collaboration.
5. Develop, apply and disseminate innovative tools and platforms for knowledge-based tropical marine spatial planning
6. Contribute to the aims of the Action Plan for a Maritime Strategy in the Atlantic Area (2013) and EU Blue Growth scheme
Progress reports
By 2020, sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts, including by strengthening their resilience, and take action for their restoration in order to achieve healthy and productive oceans
By 2020, effectively regulate harvesting and end overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based management plans, in order to restore fish stocks in the shortest time feasible, at least to levels that can produce maximum sustainable yield as determined by their biological characteristics
By 2020, conserve at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, consistent with national and international law and based on the best available scientific information
By 2020, prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and refrain from introducing new such subsidies, recognizing that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of the World Trade Organization fisheries subsidies negotiation
By 2030, increase the economic benefits to Small Island developing States and least developed countries from the sustainable use of marine resources, including through sustainable management of fisheries, aquaculture and tourism
Increase scientific knowledge, develop research capacity and transfer marine technology, taking into account the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Criteria and Guidelines on the Transfer of Marine Technology, in order to improve ocean health and to enhance the contribution of marine biodiversity to the development of developing countries, in particular small island developing States and least developed countries
Provide access for small-scale artisanal fishers to marine resources and markets
July 2019
