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ABSTRACT
Integrated Maritime Spatial Planning (IMSP) supported by the European Union since the 2007 Blue Book on Maritime Policy, combines principles of ICZM with needs for sustainable development, elaborating different tools and procedures for spatial planning on both coastal and marine sides. The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) has incidence on the coastal and maritime areas, together, with multiple competing economic, social and environmental objectives: the connectivity between land and sea, the guarantor of the full implementation instruments for sustainable development, the most appropriate mean to ensure predictability, stability and transparency and the contributor to the development and to implementation of uniform procedures.
The marine space and coastal zone of Romania is experiencing increasing pressures mainly due to population increase, urbanization, growth in agriculture, fisheries, industry and mineral resources extraction, transport, tourism. As it is essential for the national economy, competition for its resources is growing, threatening to destruct the functional integrity of the resource system. The coast is already subject to erosion, water pollution, decline of renewable resources, loss of biological diversity, wetlands losses and destruction of landscape. The need to deal in the future with the impacts of climate change in combination with finding adaptive responses is also an issue.
In Romania the main spatial conflicts on the sea are most often identified between nature protection, tourism, oil extraction transport and fisheries. Major problem is that the Black Sea is among the most endangered ones in Europe, considered as a 'closed' water basin with unique, dynamic and sensitive ecosystems under threat by the continental pressures and conflicting coastal and maritime activities. It is at the center of different and divergent geopolitical and strategic interests. Maritime Spatial Plans should take care of all of these.
Romania is starting to take its first steps in MSP. Although Romania has a coastal law (Law no. 280, 24 June 2003, approving The Emergency Order of the Government no. 202/2002 for ICZM), put in place, maritime spatial planning was missing up to 2008. Until 2012 no legal or regulatory framework to allow either maritime spatial planning or the relevant institutions to deal with maritime spatial planning procedures was in place. Some projects related marine researches, including maritime spatial planning have been performed by NIMRD Constanta and other institutions....