January | 2017 | BPAN.fi

Workshop on coastal areas in the Barents Region was held in Murmansk, Russia, 15-16th of June 2016.

A two-day workshop brought 26 marine protected area experts together to exchange knowledge on the existing and planned protected coastal areas as well as known ecologically sensitive areas. They were preparing and reviewing maps that present these areas in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

The participants of the workshop on coastal areas in the Barents Region. Photo Jan Ekebom.

As a result of the workshop there are thematic maps on coastal areas and recommendations for developing the coastal protected area network in the Barents Region.

These maps on the existing and planned coastal protected areas and other valuable coastal areas are produced in BPAN II phase. Expert conclusions together with the maps will be published this year 2017.

Next autumn 2017 there will be a workshop on the marine protected areas and climate change in the Arctic organized by the Arctic Council Working Group of the Arctic Marine Environment in Finland.

After the workshop on 17th of June the participants visited a coastal village Teriberka where a movie Leviathan was filmed. Photo Anna Kuhmonen.

The workshop was very successful with good presentations and discussions, and the common conclusions, stated BPAN Steering Committee member Bente Christiansen, Director from Finnmark County Governor’s Office (Norway). These results are important to be presented in the next Habitat Contact Forum, that will be held on 4-6 June, 2017 in Finland, continues Christiansen, who also acts as a Chair of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council’s subgroup on nature protection and water.

The presentations in the meeting (the unfinalized maps are deleted from the presentations):

Vladimir Chizhov and Natalia Poikarpova: Perspectives of a new protected area in the Vorjema river valley on the Russian-Norwegian border (pdf)

Bente Christiansen and Jørgen Remmen: Coastal protected areas in Northern Norway_part1 (pdf)

Bente Christiansen and Jørgen Remmen: Coastal protected areas in Northern Norway_part2 (pdf)

Jan Ekebom: National and international context for our work on MPAs and marine nature conservation (pdf)

Ville Karvinen and Jan Ekebom: Marine Protected Areas in Sweden (pdf)

Anna Kuhmonen: BPAN phases I and II (pdf)

Kirsi Kostamo: Finnish Inventory Programme for the Marine Underwater Environment (pdf)

Ivan Mizin: Coastal protected area network development in the Russian part of the Barents region (pdf)

Margarita Puharov: EBSA, no-go areas in the Barents Sea and marine spatial planning (MSP) as a tool for sensitive areas conservation (pdf)

Shavykin A.A.: Problems determining the vulnerability of marine and coastal areas from oil spills (pdf)

Konstantin Sokolov: Some thoughts to the workshop on coastal protected areas in the Barents Region (pdf)