Within the Capacity4MSP project, VASAB Secretariat has started the work towards developing an integrated report on MSP stakeholder involvement and engagement. The report will encompass and analyse experience and lessons learnt from MSP projects and national MSP processes that concern stakeholder involvement, their awareness raising and engagement into MSP at EU, BSR and national as well as regional level.

The work with stakeholders has been an important topic for several MSP projects as well as it is a crucial task for national MSP processes. This report will summarise approaches used in stakeholder involvement and engagement activities, furthermore, it will include stakeholder identification and mapping as well as will describe peculiarities and gaps in communication identified in the national MSP processes and improvements needed. Results of the report will be targeted to MSP practitioners, MSP policy and decision makers within and outside the BSR to support their daily work dealing with stakeholder involvement and awareness raising.

After a public procurement procedure, VASAB Secretariat has signed a contract with Baltic Environmental Forum Latvia that will elaborate the report. The development of this report is closely linked to other project activity, for example, with the synthesis report of current MSP activities and planner’s dialogue activities. Consequently, the tenderer will have to coordinate its activities with the responsible project partners, as well as join the project events to obtain primary data and validate the assumptions made. It is planned that the first draft of the report for collecting the project partner feedback will be ready by December 2020, the discussion of report’s outcomes will be organised as a workshop during the 4th Baltic MSP Forum on 1-2 June 2021 in Jurmala, Latvia. The final report will be published in September 2021.

Capacity4MSP is a project platform financed by INTERREG Baltic Sea Region Programme.