VASAB and HELCOM as a EUSBSR Horizontal Action “Spatial Planning” coordinators have received a technical assistance grant for the new HASPS 3 project. Starting from September 2018 project will continue the work of the previous HASPS and HASPS-2 projects. Grant is financed by the European Union through the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014-2020.

VASAB has initiated “Baltic Sea Region Young Planners Contest” to collect fresh ideas and enhance perspective of young planning professionals about the Baltic Sea Region`s future. During the competition the best planners from all VASAB countries will come together and via intense summer camp will bring their ideas and spatial solutions to the rising challenges of Baltic Sea Region in 2050. Best idea(s) will be presented in the VASAB Ministerial Conference.

Future shipping scenarios are important for all Baltic Sea countries, therefore transnational Baltic LINes project has been working on developing spatial shipping scenarios. The new project report “Quo Vadis - Exploring the future of shipping in the Baltic Sea” deals with the scenarios building activities done under the project. The goal of this report is to discuss the results of the shipping scenario activities along different themes and thereby provide suggestions for other activities in the project, for example the development of recommendations for MSP.

VASAB secretariat has opened a public tender for qualified expertise on assessing the application of Baltic Sea Common Regional Maritime Spatial Planning Framework. Assessment is being done as part of the Pan Baltic Scope project and is designed to directly support HELCOM-VASAB MSP WG in implementing their work plan until 2019.

The Baltic Sea faces an increasing spatial demand for human activities. In particular offshore renewable energy is a quite new interest with a considerably high demand on sea space. In light of climate protection policy some countries have set national energy targets for offshore wind. For the implementation of these targets the offshore wind energy sector competes with other uses on limited space.

Pan Baltic Scope is happy to invite you to its Opening conference - introducing lasting macro-regional tools for Baltic maritime spatial plans. Maritime spatial planning (MSP) has become a hot topic moving e…