Marine Spatial Planning in the Context of the Convention on Biological Diversity

Area-based planning and management processes have been important environmental and resources management tools for many decades. They provide effective frameworks to consider environmental, social, cultural, institutional, and economic variables within a common bio-geographic context – bringing what are at times competing interests together to form a common management vision. Marine spatial planning represents an important step to improving collaboration amongst multiple users of the marine environment towards a shared vision and outcomes. Understanding successes and challenges in marine spatial planning and scaling up these experiences to large marine areas and trans-boundary regions are therefore essential to effective achievement of the Aichi targets on marine and coastal biodiversity. As such, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in its tenth meeting, requested the Executive Secretary to compile and synthesize available information in collaboration with Parties, other Governments and relevant organizations on their experiences and use of marine spatial planning, in particular on ecological, economic, social, cultural and other principles used to guide such planning and the use of areabased management tools. In response to this request, the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility prepared this publication in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.