The navigation and tourism are responsible of important impacts on the decrease of marine biodiversity. The marine protected areas, due to their environmental attractions, are the areas where most of the movements of boats and anchoring activities are concentrated, and at the same time the location of harbours and moorings depends on the proximity of the attractions.

Recreational boating is practiced by 36 million of Europeans, who use 6 million boats in 4,500 European ports that offer 1.75 million moorings. Catalonia represents an important maritime port for recreation boating, with 32.700 moorings points. However, the number of moorings increase from spring to summer time, where temporal floating moorings are installed by coastal municipalities to increase the capacity of moorings. In Cap de Creus Natural Park and its influence area, there are 9.500 moorings points at marinas and floating areas, what makes this coastal area a hotspot for recreational boating.

The critical aspect of this boating capacity is the lack of regulation that prevents environmental impacts on maritime and coastal ecosystems. In fact, according to our research, most regulations in Catalonia and Spain related with recreation boating planning and management, are not put in place environmental instruments, instead the policy has tended to increase the mooring capacity year-by-year since the lasts decades. This project contributes to the collective participative process undertook for the development of the new master plan for use and management of the Cap de Creus Natural Park (PRUG) currently being drafted.

Activities:

  1. Diagnosis conflicts, pressures and regulation on Cap de Creus Natural Park.
  2. Benchmark of strategies for sustainable recreation boating planning/management in MedPan Network.
  3. One webinar with local stakeholders in Cap de Creus.
  4. Define strategies to integrate EBA for recreational tourism for Cap de Creus: Technical Report in Spanish + Executive Summary in English.
  5. Guidelines for sustainable recreation boating management in MPAs (In English).

Outcome: 

The results of this project have been published in two reports:

  1. Boating Guidelines: Managing the environmental sustainability of nautical tourism in Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas
  2. Technical report (in Spanish): Conflictos, impactos ambientales y ordenación espacial marítima de la náutica recreativa en el Parque Natural de Cap de Creus

 

This publication was produced in the framework of the MedPAN Small Project CAP BOATING funded by the French Facility for Global Environment (FFEM) and Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.