Cooperation with USA
The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management collaborate with the USA concerning marine spatial planning, marine protected areas and biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.
Marine Spatial Planning
The cooperation within marine spatial planning have been on-going since 2016. Our main cooperation partners are:
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
- Channel Island Marine Sanctuary,
- University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB),
- The Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU).
Several knowledge- and experience sharing activities have been completed in the fields of maritime traffic, remediation of shipwrecks, marine spatial planning and analyses of cumulative impacts. The work with the assessment tool Symphony is our most prominent activity which have been widely supported by our colleagues from USA. There have been two workshops within the project and a third and conclusive one be held in Sweden during 2019.
Marine protected areas and connectivity
We have been collaborating with NOAA and the Ocean Protection Council since 2018, within the fields of marine protected areas and connectivity. By developing a framework for marine area protection valuable distribution corridors for marine organisms and birds can be secured. This creates prerequisites to reach the target about an ecological representative and a coherent network of protected areas. The work aims to share experiences which will facilitate and support the drafting of such networks in the marine areas in Sweden. A workshop will be organized in Sweden in 2019.
Biological diversity beyond national jurisdiction
We collaborates with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Monterray and NOAA on strategic environmental assessments (SEA) and Symphony within the framework of the UN biological diversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) - negotiations (The negotiations involving a binding environmental law for international water). The aim is to provide examples of pragmatic and transparent methods for handling cumulative environmental assessments in order to give representative examples of SEA methods and how these practically can be implemented. We plan to arrange a side-event at the UN negotiations in 2019.
