UNESCO and the European Commission have released a new volume of the MSPglobal International Guide on Marine/Maritime Spatial Planning, offering 24 actionable recommendations to help countries develop climate-smart marine spatial planning (MSP) processes.
This third volume of the guide responds to the growing urgency of climate change impacts on oceans and coasts, and provides a roadmap for governments, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and stakeholders to embed climate adaptation and mitigation into ocean planning.
The ocean absorbs over 90% of excess heat and 25% of global CO₂ emissions, but its buffering capacity is weakening due to warming, acidification, and deoxygenation. These changes threaten marine biodiversity, food security, and coastal infrastructure.
MSP offers a strategic, inclusive, and science-based framework to manage ocean space sustainably. By becoming climate-smart, MSP can help countries:
Adapt to shifting ecosystems and species distributions
Protect and restore blue carbon ecosystems
Support renewable energy deployment
Strengthen coastal resilience and livelihoods
The guide is structured around six planning phases and includes:
Cross-cutting recommendations on uncertainty, adaptation, mitigation, and equity
Phase-specific actions such as dynamic zoning, stakeholder engagement, and ecosystem restoration
Case studies from the Philippines, Dominica, Finland, the Netherlands, and Uruguay showcasing real-world applications
It emphasizes four key pillars of climate-smart MSP:
Ecosystem health
Systems interactions and dynamics
Social knowledge, equity, and change
Integration of climate and ocean policies
The guidelines align with international climate goals, including the Paris Agreement, and support the inclusion of MSP in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).
UNESCO and the European Commission plan to scale up training and dissemination of the guide, contributing to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030).