
The ocean has an amazing ability to accommodate military, recreational, and commercial uses. But have you ever wondered how these activities take place simultaneously without competing for time and spaces? Over the vast and endless ocean, spatial planning, mostly invisible to our eyes, is playing a major role in coordinating human activities.
Planning is a land-based practice that designates optimum forms of use for a bounded area. You may have been familiar with the concept of planning from some gardening work in your own backyard. My grandmother taught me her gardening secret that everyone also knows: “Grow plants in the most appropriate area to satisfy their needs for soil, water, air and sunlight.”
So, can ocean uses be planned ? Yes, this has been happening since the early 1980s. But planning in marine spaces is way more comprehensive than it is on land. Marine space is multidimensional, including the sea surface, the air above it, the water column, the seabed and the subsoil beneath it. A more expanded example is that in the Arctic, the sea ice becomes another layer, the one which Arctic Indigenous Peoples have occupied and used for traditional and subsistence activities since time immemorial.
Spatial planning in marine spaces is more complex than assigning a purpose for an area. Spatial planning integrates multiple uses, multiple objectives and multiple interests within a given area for an overall goal. Located on the northeastern coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is the first known formal Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) initiative, visioning a sustainable future for this largest coral reef ecosystem on Earth. After decades of planning and implementation, spatial planning has become the foundation of resilience management of this nature treasure.
MSP has developed rapidly on a global scale. By 2030, it is expected that MSP will cover at least a third of the world’s exclusive economic zones, that extend from the shore out to 200 nautical miles into the ocean. How about Canada? Surprisingly, more than 10 per cent of Canada’s coastal and marine areas are protected through area-based networks.
From the Pacific North coast to the Atlantic coast, from the Beaufort Sea to the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence, Fisheries and Oceans Canada is proposing MSP as a collaborative and transparent approach to satisfy societal needs and interests – from marine commerce to marine environment protection. Canada has gained some experience in MSP so far. Recently intensified human activities in Canadian waters have driven this more systematic approach to protect our oceans.
You and I are only one of many ocean users; we share the ocean with each other and enjoy resources provided by the ocean. But we also have an obligation to protect the ocean. Next time you enjoy the beauty of the coasts and oceans, think about the multidimensional nature of the oceans and about the way Canada can use the integrated and holistic approach of spatial planning to effectively govern all of our three oceans.