SEADITO partners were among invited speakers at the final conference of the LIFE REEF project in Liepāja, Latvia 28th-30th of October 2025. The scope of the conference was to discuss and present insights on how to integrate science into conservation policy, drawing on cross-disciplinary, social-ecological perspectives.
Daniel Depellegrin from IHCantabria and Solvita Strāķe from Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology provided insights for the session on coherence of the MPAs network with the MSP and ICM. Focusing on pan-Baltic management integration, Daniel highlighted social-ecological vulnerability assessments, human activity conflict analyses, the ongoing development of the European Digital Twin Ocean, and an active use of a holistic DAPSIR framework as important tools. Solvita presented Latvian maps of marine protected area suitability resulting from studies of ecological functions and social impact.
Aurelija Armoskaite from Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology and Ida Maria Bonnevie from Aalborg University were part of the session on pressure and impact analysis. Aurelija demonstrated the importance of thorough field observations to provide high quality spatial data, and how it can be integrated into cumulative impact analysis, ecological function analysis, and ecosystem service analysis. Ida presented ongoing SEADITO work on scenario-based cumulative impact assessments to enable what-if scenarios based on different time perspectives and planned human activities.
Both sessions ended in active panel discussions among all speakers based on questions from audience and panel moderators. Important remarks for the road ahead included
- encouraging planning to be iterative and based on planning, doing, and learning
- active consideration of what we want to protect and why? Going from single species and single MPA planning to ecological networks and holistic social perspectives with the incorporation of future scenarios.
- to reach ambitious conservation and renewable energy objectives, trade-offs are needed but require proper planning and coordination and stakeholder interaction
- the sharing of systematic monitoring data are relevant across management institutions and borders, improving also available EU data e.g. EMODnet
Author: Ida Maria Bonnevie – Aalborg University, Copenhagen