Ocean governance
Ocean governance ties together all the focus areas of the maritime cluster in Västra Götaland. This focus area evolves around laws and regulations and includes everything concerning regulation of activities and impacts on the sea.
Cultural and legal tradition has resulted in various regulations regarding the use of marine resources. Consequently, there are overlaps and in some cases also conflicts between these regulations. Knowledge and collaboration is therefore needed to avoid that these different regulations undermine regional development in coherence with political goals.
An efficient, ecosystem-based governance of maritime resources also requires the integration of various instruments for marine governance. This implies that several acts and policies with relation to e.g. environmental protection, energy, fisheries and transport at sea are taken into account. Similarly, in order to obtain successful ocean governance, there is a need for comprehensive integration between different levels of governance; from the international and national levels to the regional and local levels. It is therefore important that involved actors and the governance system effectively collaborate and communicate with each other.
On this background, the objective of the ocean governance group is to develop collaboration on ocean governance and maritime spatial planning with focus on the municipal level. This work includes dealing with related regulations and strategies in collaboration with relevant actors in the region of West Sweden as well as internationally. We work in different ways to raise the level of knowledge about ocean governance among key stakeholders and to establish arenas for the exchange of research results and experiences between governance, academia and the industry.
Links to Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) in EU
Host organization
Centre for Sea and Society, University of Gothenburg
Visiting address: Seminariegatan 1F
Postal adress: Box 260, 405 30 Göteborg
