Marine Spatial Planning, Brexit and the island of Ireland

Heather Ritchie, Wesley Flannery , Anne Marie O'Hagan , Sarah Twomey , Cathal O'Mahony

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)
192 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Brexit poses major institutional and governance challenges for the island of Ireland, not least in the area of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and the cooperative governance and integrated management of shared marine spaces and ecosystems. To date, MSP scholarship has not delved into the complex processes that construct marine borders and has failed to acknowledge how the same border may have different boundary qualities across a range of institutional contexts. Using the case of transboundary marine governance on the island of Ireland, we evaluate recent marine governance innovations in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and Northern Ireland (NI) to assess if they promote integration. We then illustrate how the boundary characteristics of marine borders are context dependent, with the same border being both hard and soft in differing contexts, and we discuss how this may be impacted by Brexit. We argue that the development of integrated marine management is not a priority in these jurisdictions and that the resulting complex, multiple constructions of marine borders has largely been ignored by MSP researchers.1 We conclude that developing a more nuanced understanding of borders in order to advance integrated marine management is crucial for post-Brexit MSP planning practice and research.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)213-233
Number of pages21
JournalIrish Geography
Volume52
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 29 Apr 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Anne Marie O’Hagan’s contribution to this paper was supported by the NAVIGATE project (Grant-Aid Agreement No. PBA/IPG/17/01) carried out with the support of the Marine Institute and funded under the Marine Research Programme by the Irish Government.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Geographical Society of Ireland. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Marine Spatial Planning
  • Ireland
  • Northern Ireland
  • integration
  • transboundary

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Marine Spatial Planning, Brexit and the island of Ireland'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this