The Ministry of Earth Sciences informed that India and Norway will work jointly in the area of marine spatial planning for the next five years.
Key Points
- India and Norway recently virtually conducted the first project steering committee meeting with representatives from both countries.
- Both countries have devised a plan to ensure that human activities at sea take place in a safe, efficient, and sustainable manner in areas like transportation, energy, fisheries, tourism, and aquaculture across multiple sectors.
- Lakshadweep and Puducherry have been identified as pilot sites for the project.
- This is a part of the Indo-Norway Integrated Ocean Initiative under the MoU signed between the two countries in the year 2019.
- Both countries have decided to extend their support for sustainable ocean resource utilization to advance economic and social development in coastal areas.
- The initiative called Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) will be implemented by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
- It will be implemented through the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) for India.
- In the initial phase, NCCR will develop a marine spatial planning framework for Puducherry and Lakshadweep.
- India’s initial investments for undertaking the studies and planning are estimated to be around Rs 8-10 crore per year.
- The World Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have also shown interest in supporting MoES in conducting MSP.
The MSP initiative will be implemented by MoES and the Norwegian Environment Agency through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway. The MSP initiative will help in the development of multiple economic sectors and stakeholders in the greater number of coastal areas of the country. Before this, NCCR had developed coastal management plans for Goa, Chennai, and Gulf of Kutch and all of them have been very successful.