Requirement R103

Requirement detail

MMO requires social baseline information on communities adjacent to marine plan areas in England. Information required includes:

• social value of marine activities to communities adjacent to or which gain significant benefit from the marine area
• drivers of change that affect the social value of marine activities
• social impacts of predicted changes to marine activities on beneficiary communities

It is suggested that the work will be carried out in a two stage process; firstly to prioritise appropriate required social evidence for planning including those social issues that planning could influence and secondly to carry out evidence gathering and research identified as a priority evidence gap from the first stage. This information should be provided in forms that are easy to use, include economic and social metrics and including displaying them spatially where relevant.

Requirement R016

Requirement detail

A key issue in all marine plan areas is the optimisation of space through promoting compatibility and encouraging co-existence between different activities. As such co-existence or displacement of activities should be considered within marine planning.

An evaluation approach providing integrated consideration of the environmental, social and economic impacts of co-location/displacement has been proposed in research project MMO 1049. Some of the recommendations have been implemented. There is a need to create a coherent Coexistence Assessment process, consisting of interaction tables and assessments tools which will inform the development of marine plan policies on colocation. This will help applicants in the marine licensing process to formalise their response by accounting for the impact of their project in terms of activities that can collocate or displace others.

Requirement R005

Requirement detail

Improved information on the migratory pathways, timings and relative conservation importance of marine species is required to inform balanced evaluation of the cost and benefits of protecting those pathways.

Though information on all migratory species would be useful, early work will be to identify the species that are of most interest (including migratory fish), particularly species that are subject to statutory conservation measures.

This requirement focuses on migration (predictable large-scale movement in space and time) rather than just mobility e.g. dispersal.