By Laudia Sawer
Accra, June 22, GNA – Ghana has been urged to have an overarching authority to ensure that the country’s Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and its implementation succeed in its bid to sustain its marine waters.
Participants at a National Training Workshop on Marine Spatial Planning in Ghana agreed that having an authority especially headed by an executive, with representation from various stakeholders, would help bring synergy in the management and sustainability of the marine space instead of the current situation where many institutions have different mandates in the usage of the ocean.
 
The National Training was held as part of the project “Using Marine Spatial Planning in the Gulf of Guinea for the Implementation of Payment for Ecosystem Services and Nature-Based Coastal Solutions (MarEcoPlan).
The MarEcoPlan project is a three-year, three-million-dollar pilot Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) project being implemented in three of the Secretariat of the Fisheries Committee of the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC), Member States: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, jointly being implemented with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and is being funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
Mrs Dieynaba Seck, the MarEcoPlan’s International MSP Consultant, facilitating the workshop with support of Dr Kwame Adu Agyekum, the MarEcoPlan’s Ghana MSP Consultant, said “For the MSP to succeed, Ghana need a higher-level body to oversee it.”
Mrs Seck said the ocean is an empty expanse and a big enough space serving many purposes for different stakeholders, adding that the ocean or sea forms about 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface, providing multiple services.
She said it is a source of food, income, oxygen, coastal protection, carbon storage, habitats for plants and animals, climate regulation, as well as a source of essential and vital activities.
 
She added that blue planning aims to achieve multiple objectives covering social, economic, and ecological, and therefore, should reflect as many expectations, opportunities, or conflicts in its planning area as possible.
 
Mrs Seck noted that countries engage in blue planning due to legal requirements or drive policy; opportunities in the blue economy, food security among others; conflict in the marine area relative to the use of the sea; and solving problems such as combating climate change.
She stressed the importance of stakeholders, defining stakeholders as individuals or groups of organisations who have an interest or stake in or are affected positively or negatively by a process or management decision.
She explained that blue planning aims to achieve stakeholder involvement, which is a legal prerequisite in many countries, to help learn more about human influences on the planning area, access local knowledge and evidence, understand sectoral priorities and interests, identify conflicts early, ensure ownership of the outcome, and improve implementation.
The facilitator further added that it also helps to jointly develop innovative solutions to problems identified, ensure the process is effective and voluntary compliance, and make use of the potential of involving stakeholders in monitoring.
She noted that other important aspects of Marine Spatial Planning is inventory, establishing administrative boundaries, gathering of data, stakeholder engagement, and monitoring and evaluation.
She emphasised that the blue plan is not the goal, stressing that the key is its iimplementation, adding that evaluation is an opportunity to ask critical questions both about the Blue Planning process itself and the outcomes of this process.
GNA
Kenneth Odeng Adade