Portugal is one of the European Union’s largest coastal states, holding jurisdiction over approximately half of the European Union’s marine waters and a vast expanse of seabed and subsoil in the Northeast Atlantic. The country plays a pivotal role in promoting ocean sustainability and governance, both within the European Union and on the global stage. The importance of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water, cannot be understated. It will require policy coherence across sectors, levels of governance and the different uses of ocean resources.
This report is the final output of the project “22PT18 Development of a Strategic Plan for Decarbonisation, Digitisation, and Sustainable Blue Economy for the Port-Maritime and Fisheries Sectors and Maritime Spatial Planning and Marine Sustainability”. It sets out a path for Portugal to harness its ocean economy to foster sustainable use of national and international marine resources, including recommendations for enhancing policy coherence for sustainable development to 2030 and beyond.
In doing so, the report calls on the Portuguese ocean administration to systematically identify and address policy interactions, optimise synergies and minimise trade-offs, and consider the impacts of domestic policies on other countries.
The main beneficiary of this project is the Directorate-General for Natural Resources, Safety and Maritime Services (Direção-Geral de Recursos Naturais, Segurança e Serviços Marítimos, DGRM) under the Ministry of Economy and Maritime Affairs, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in Portugal. The DGRM faces challenges and opportunities in strengthening policy coherence and co-ordination across its many mandates, including improving internal governance and organisational set-up, increasing the availability of human and financial resources, and keeping up with fast-paced digitalisation.
The project has been shaped by an inclusive process, with continuous involvement of government and non-government stakeholders over the past two years. Several activities have helped to ensure ownership and buy-in of the findings, including a multi-stakeholder kick-off meeting and focus group discussions in March 2023 to identify key issues and priorities; fact-finding interviews throughout 2023 to fill research gaps; validation of policy options by different branches of government and private sector representatives; and multi-stakeholder workshops in the second quarter of 2024 to define collective input to the new Strategic Plan of the DGRM.
The project was funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, and implemented by the OECD, in co-operation with the European Commission.