EG ESA
Expert Group on economic and social analyses
The HELCOM expert group on economic and social analyses (EG ESA) enhances regional collaboration to produce comparable information on the economic and social aspects of the Baltic Sea marine environment. The group serves as a platform for discussion and information exchange on the ongoing and planned work, and it will act to develop and agree on regional approaches for ESA. The work will be set up to support both regional and national ESA work to fulfil HELCOM and other commitments of the Contracting Parties.
The HELCOM expert group on economic and social analyses enhances regional collaboration to produce comparable information on the economic and social aspects of the Baltic Sea marine environment. The group serves as a platform for discussion and information exchange on the ongoing and planned work, and acts to develop and agree on regional approaches. The work is set up to support both regional and national needs for economic and social analyses to fulfil HELCOM and other commitments of the Contracting Parties.
Economic and social analyses provide a set of tools for examining the interlinkages between the ecosystem and the social-economic system, and illustrate how the use of marine waters contributes to the economy, how do ecosystem services affect human well-being, and what are the costs and benefits of achieving a healthy marine ecosystem. Economic and social analyses contribute to ecosystem-based approach and management, sustainable blue economy and use of marine resources, maritime spatial planning, and integration and effective implementation of marine policies, including the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan and the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
The work of the experts from the coastal countries has been supported by several projects. The ACTION project (2019-2020), with guidance from the HELCOM SOM Platform, supported the BSAP update by assessing the sufficiency of existing measures to improve the marine environment and the cost-effectiveness of potential new measures. The Pan Baltic Scope project (2018-2019) reviewed available methods, data and literature for assessing economic, social and ecosystem service impacts in maritime spatial planning, and developed recommendations on economic and social analyses to support MSP. The ESA group developed regional economic and social analyses on the use of marine waters and cost of degradation for the HOLAS II updated “State of the Baltic Sea” report with the support from the TAPAS project (2016) and the SPICE project (2017).
Documents
Contact
Luke Dodd
Project researcher
luke.dodd@helcom.fi
