Current and future impacts on the marine environment : the challenges to achieve good environmental status : Malta report

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea is increasingly exploited by a range of maritime activities, all of which are predicted to expand substantially over the next 20 years: wind farms, oil extraction, cables, shipping routes, fisheries and other human activities including tourism. The increased demand for the limited space and marine resources, increased conflict between maritime sectors as well as between human use and nature has triggered the European Commission to consider an EU-integrated spatial approach towards EU maritime areas in the form of a Marine Spatial Planning Directive. In July 2014, the European Parliament and the Council adopted legislation to create a common framework for maritime spatial planning in Europe. While each EU country will be free to plan its own maritime activities, local, regional and national planning in shared seas would be made more compatible through a set of minimum common requirements.

The MedTrends project is inspired by WWF‟s 2010 report “Future trends in the Baltic Sea”, which highlights the substantial growth trend expected in the Baltic region over the next 20 years, showing how the Baltic Sea governance framework is clearly ill-equipped to meet oncoming challenges. In a nutshell the MedTrends project has been scoped to illustrate and map the most likely integrated scenarios of marine economic growth at a transnational level in Med-EU countries for the next 20 years. The potential cumulative impacts of human activities at sea will be assessed and put into the perspective of the 10% marine protected areas target set for the Mediterranean.

The project has the scope of carrying out an overall analysis of growth trends and potential cumulative impacts of human activities at sea, with particular reference to both the set Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) target of 10% of coastal and marine protected areas in the Mediterranean (CBD target 11), as well as to the achievement of the Good Environmental Status (GES) objective set by the European Union‟s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). The over-arching sectors chosen for this exercise include wind energy, shipping, ports, oil and gas exploration and extraction, pipelines and cables, coastal development, sand and gravel extraction, military activity, industrial pollution, tourism and recreation, commercial fishing, aquaculture, agricultural runoff, climate change, coastal chemical plants, desalinization plants. As far as Malta‟s national reporting is concerned, the following themes were examined on the basis of their local relevance: maritime transport, oil and gas exploration and extraction, pipelines and cables, coastal development, extraction of non-living resources (including dredging and water for potable use), infrastructure, land-based activities, tourism, recreational and commercial fishing, marine aquaculture, safety and security and waste disposal.

This report thus forms part of a collection of other national reports compiled by the MedTrends partners. A transnational report outlining scenarios for the future development is another MedTrends deliverable, meant to outline the future scenario of sectoral development in the Mediterranean. At both the national and transnational levels, advisory committees have been set up to provide advice and assist in the provision of data and information.