Showing it like it is Information for Scotiand's Marine National Plan

摘要

The need and the obligations to understand and manage the activities going on in the seas around Scotland have been growing steadily over the last 20 years. In 1992 the EU Habitats Directive(92/43/EEC)provided one of the first opportunities to protect certain features through the designation of Special Areas of Conserva-tion(SaCs). Further obligations followed with the OSPAR Convention and the EU Water Framework Directive(2000/60/EC)in 2000), and the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive(2008/56/EC)in 2008. Most recently and significantly, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the Marine(Scotland)Act 2010 provide for comprehensive marine planning in Scottish waters out to 200 nautical miles, as well as new marine conservation responsibilities. This wave of Directives and legislation is not only a sign of the growing acknowledgement by politicians that the marine environment is a precious and vulnerable resource but also that greater powers are needed to protect it. In Scotland with devolution came opportunities and challenges. In 2005 the Scottish Government published 'Seas the Opportunity ~ a strategy for the long-term suslainability of Scotland's coasts and seas'. In this it endorsed the vision for 'clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse marine and coastal environments managed to meet the long-term needs of nature and people'.