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This post is written by Norma Serra

Inspired by the Blue Solutions training course “Blue Planning in Practice”, MEOPAR supported an in-person Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) training workshop from June 6 to 9, 2022, at the University of Victoria. The goal of this workshop was to strengthen practical planning and implementation of MSP for practitioners responsible for coastal and marine planning and management. The workshop was attended by 17 participants with different backgrounds, including from the federal government, consulting companies, First Nations, and graduate students, and varying understandings of MSP.

Participants self-identified learning progress from the start (blue dots) versus at the end of the course (black dots).

From the first day, participants were highly motivated and seized opportunities for learning. They perceived this training program as a fruitful learning experience, and many highlighted the engaging and highly participatory training methodology and use of casework examples.

The course was based on a fictitious case study that mimicked real-life conditions and challenges, providing an interactive environment to teach the different stages of the marine planning process. The exercises challenged participants to develop their own solutions in a highly interactive and engaging way.

This training also provided opportunities to network and allowed the creation of new partnerships between the participants.  It also opened the door to potential new training opportunities in the future. For example, most of the participants showed interest in learning about tools that can be applied in Marine Spatial Planning processes, such as Marxan and Seasketch, and how to become trainers themselves.

A photographic documentation was prepared for the workshop and is available by clicking the following link.

The facilitators were Marinez Scherer, Sonia Gautreau and Norma Serra, who met in Bali for the first time in 2016 during the Train-of-Trainers (ToT) training organized by Blue Solutions, a partnership of four leading environmental organizations (GIZ, GRID-Arendal, IUCN and UNEP) that ‘aimed at supporting the sustainable development of our blue world, for people and nature.’

We want to thank MEOPAR for providing the funding for this workshop, Dr Natalie Ban and PacMARA for support, and Kristin Worsley from the BC Province to come and talk about Marine Plan Partnership for the North Pacific Coast (MaPP).

Post written by Norma Serra-Sogas, Aquatic Biologist, DFO Science and one of the MEOPAR 2022 MSP Workshop trainer.