WKCES is a direct
outcome of the work in WGMPCZM in 2011 and 2012 and the workshop on
Quality Assurance in MSP (WQAMSP) in 2012. It also complements work in the
ICES Strategic Initiative Group MSP (STIF-MSP) and will add to the
scientific knowledge base for Marine Spatial Planning (MSP).
Despite much knowledge
about the sea, there is still insufficient knowledge of actual sea values, in
other words, what marine goods, services, and benefits are valued, by whom
these goods, services, and benefits are (particularly) valued, where these
values are located in space, and whether conflicts exist between different
values. Whilst the sea is commonly regarded as a setting for generating
multiple economic values, it is less often regarded as a place defined by
cultural meanings and area of convergence of different constructs of place.
For MSP, a key concern
is to develop methods for identifying cultural values and for mapping those
areas that are of particular importance for cultural reasons. Apart from making
these values visible, mapping is also a way of making different values visible
in the same format, using spatial representation as a common currency. WKCES
aims to bring together selected experts with the aim of collating the methods
used in various contexts (e.g. anthropology, tourism management, visual
assessments of landscape impacts) to identify places of socio-cultural
importance and ways of rating the relative importance of these places.
The workshop will also
look at methods available for rating different influences/impacts on the values
identified and thereby develop guidelines and a handbook to include
socio-cultural aspects into decision-making in MSP and marine environmental
management. Beside the workshop report, a Cooperative Research Report (CRR),
which will take the form of a manual, will be elaborated.
