On 29 September, 2021, the Fourth Steering Committee (SC) Meeting of the MARSPLAN-BS II project was successfully conducted. Due to the safety measures, the meeting was carried out in a video-conference format organized and hosted by the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration of Romania. All partners in the MARSPLAN-BS II project as well as representatives of European Commission`s DG MARE and CINEA attended the SC Meeting.
The Fourth SC Meeting aimed at providing an efficient communication and feedback platform on MARSPLAN-BS II progress of activities as well as achieved project results and deliverables.
The partners discussed on the final stages of completion of project activites in the four WPs: scenarios for future conditions, common GIS database, follow-up of the common framework in relation with national maritime spatial plans – overcoming the existing gaps, common strategy for the cross-border maritime area of Bulgaria and Romania, stakeholder engagement, elaboration of methodology for integrating Land-Sea Interactions (LSI) in MSP, project management and coordination issues; project visibility and communication of the project deliverables, publication of project materials, peer-reviewed research papers, etc. Also, the risk management plan has been updated for the remaining project months, in order to foresee potential risks, estimate impacts, and define responses to arisen issues for successful implementation of project activities. As partner in the project CCMS leads the activity on integration of LSI in MSP and presented results on the developed methodology for LSI analysis and their integration in national and cross-border MSP, results and key messages from testing the LSI methodology in Bulgaria (Shabla Municipality), identified challenges and enabling factors to integrating LSI in MSP, and best practices and recommendations for further work on integrating LSI in cross-border MSP.