Community of practice, Monitoring and evaluation

Meeting of the eMSP NBSR Monitoring and Evaluation Community of Practice

07 Jul

Following on from the first meeting which concentrated on coherence, the second meeting of the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Community of Practice (CoP) focused on the M&E of national maritime spatial plans. It took place on 21 June, online. The main objective of the meeting  was to give a brief overview of existing evaluation tools and approaches for national monitoring and evaluation and to discuss how they can be applied in the context of the framework concept the CoP has developed for this learning strand.

At first Laura Stockute gave a presentation on the “Report on the progress of implementation of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive” prepared by the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries of the European Commission. The discussion centered on key challenges facing MSP and how changes in EU policy might impact MSP: Offshore renewables, biodiversity and fisheries were mentioned as important fields in the context of the European Green Deal.

screenshot form meetingscheme conceptual frameworkscheme conceptual frameworkconcepts explained

Glimpse on virtual meeting room

The second presentation gave a basic introduction to M&E and associated terminology. Common types of MSP evaluation include implementation and compliance evaluation, outcome/performance evaluation and process evaluation. The presentation also gave an overview of existing frameworks, tools and approaches for evaluation at the national and transnational level. Many of these stem from previous projects, such as Baltic Scope or Pan Baltic Scope supported by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.
The discussion focused on the fast changing policy framework, integration of M&E in MSP from the beginning and the importance of stakeholders.

The overview of M&E tools was then linked to the M&E draft conceptual framework. Four smaller working groups were established to fill the framework with life and bring together MSP experience and scientific knowledge:

  1. Conceptual framework
  2. Plan efficiency
  3. Sectoral development
  4. Stakeholder process

The next M&E CoP meetings will be organized in September (focus on coherence) and November (focus on national M&E).

Prepared by Philipp Arndt (Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH)) July, 2022

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