Future Oceans Lab at the INTEMARES stakeholder participation phase

LIFE+IP+INTEMARES, as a follow up step of LIFE+INDEMARES, is considered the biggest project of marine conservation in Europe. LIFE IP INTEMARES drive its work towards an integrative, innovative and participative management of Natura 2000 marine network in Spain. Its objective is to reach a strong marine network of nature protection areas stated on Natura 2000 and thought a wide and active stakeholder’s participation and robust scientific knowledge tailored for decision-making.

Since FOL research activity evolves around marine protected areas, Diego Salgueiro attended last week the INTEMARES workshop, placed in A Coruña (one of eight workshops the project is doing in Spain). The purpose of this set of workshops is to start the participatory phase with stakeholders, with innovative methodologies to manage marine areas successfully.

After a brief ice-breaker presentation, participants were involved in a scientific method called Collective Intelligence. Starting with the classification of boundaries (previously identified) in typologies that block the establishment of Natura 2000 network areas, they moved on towards the identification of the most important boundaries and continuous design of interactions among them. The outcome of this step is a conceptual map of feedbacks, causes and consequences of boundaries. During the whole methodology, decisions were taken by consensus and democratic rules.

Finally, by small groups, participants discussed possible options to solve the mapped key boundaries that threat the Natura 2000 network in real life cases with specific, programmed and trans-scale actions.