Summary
Ever wondered how the enormous task of marine planning is undertaken? Now is your chance to find out. In this talk, our speaker Dr Rachel Brown of the Marine Management Organisation will discuss collaboration, data sharing and stakeholders in producing marine plans for English waters.
Description
Marine planning is a tool for delivering government priorities. It’s an integrated approach to marine management that is place based, making sure that the right activities happen at the right place, the right time and in the right way, to achieve sustainable development. The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) is responsible for preparing, implementing, monitoring, and reporting on English marine plans. 2021 saw the adoption of the final four English marine plans (North East, North West, South East, and South West), ensuring that after ten years of development there was a marine plan covering all of English waters. Since 2021 the roll out of offshore wind and marine protection ambitions have both increased, which has brought challenges and opportunities for the marine space and it’s users. The English marine plans have also had at least one monitoring Report published and the MMO has started to replace the East Marine Plan, the first to be drafted and adopted in 2014. In this talk I will explore some of the progress that has been made in marine planning for English waters, discussing collaboration, data sharing, working across government and with marine stakeholders to produce the first in the next generation of English marine plans.
Rachel has worked in marine planning for over a decade, leading the development of English marine plans as programme manager and evidence lead. Prior to this Rachel worked for OSPAR developing the first network of high seas marine protected areas and completed a PhD exploring the effects of climate change and fishing on benthic communities. Rachel is now the Head of both the Marine Planning Team and the Strategic Renewables Unit at the MMO.
