Healthy and productive oceans and coasts provide vital services essential to human society. However, many of these services are declining due to increasing and often competing coastal activities and resource uses, also in the Caspian Sea. The trend is amplified by uncoordinated sector policies and management. An integrated approach to policy implementation and ecosystem management across sectors is therefore essential to foster effective synergies.

In Turkmenistan, currently no coherent planning targeting the territorial waters or the whole Caspian Sea exists. Overarching frameworks like the Tehran Convention (2006) are still not fully implemented. Therefore, Blue Planning, i.e. ecosystem-based marine and coastal planning and management is regarded as a particularly useful approach to support integration of environment and resource management, sustainable development and governance priorities at local, national and regional scales.

 

Informed by decades of practical experiences and learning in the field, this training course aims to strengthen planning and implementation in one’s own context while providing an introduction to the theory and practical starting points of Blue Planning. It is based on a large and diverse range of existing frameworks, tools, guidelines, articles and online resources aiming to enable national and local planners and practitioners develop and implement integrated coastal and marine policies and plans.