A decade of marine spatial planning in Belgium : a journey towards integrated management

In 2003, Belgium was one of the first countries in Europe to start with spatial zoning for the North Sea (= Master Plan) and currently a legal marine spatial plan (MSP) is underway. The journey towards such MSP was turbulent, triggered by several sectoral needs (e.g. offshore energy; nature conservation) and was examined within the MESMA project (Monitoring and Evaluation of Spatially Managed Areas). A number of successful events can be noticed (e.g. the extension of a Special Area of Conservation to 1/3th of the total Belgian part of the North Sea (BPNS), allocation of an area for renewable energy,... ).
Nevertheless, there are also a number of obstacles within the MSP process such as the lack of management plans and the absence of pressure & risk analysis as well as conflicts with and among the users (e.g. renewable energy versus nature conservation on “Vlakte van de Raan”, conflicts due to multi‐level government, etc.). All these events are proceeded by a series of processes on both the national and European level. In this study, we specifically focus on the designation process of marine protected areas in the BPNS in the past decade.