Classified as the long-term promotional work, the coastal management has always been the crucial administrative point of the ocean policy in each country and its overall development direction is guided by the policy. Currently, as the marine economy competition among countries is turning white-hot, the promotion of marine spatial planning (MSP) becomes even more important than ever. Each country actively speeds up the promotion related to the MSP actions to ensure international competitiveness and position in ocean development.
Starting in 2006, the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held the first international MSP conference specifying that the use of MSP as a tool to implement ecosystem-based, sea use management (Douvere and Ehler, 2007; UNESCO, 2006). As for the marine ecosystem, MSP is a comprehensive and integrated procedure of marine environment supervision, management and protection to achieve the ecological, economic and social objectives (Douvere and Ehler, 2009). The process of MSP can solve the usage for marine diversity, accumulation and potential coopetition while promoting sustainable development of the ecological and environmental systems. The MSP planning and establishment by each country also takes the economic development into consideration. For example, the MSP objective implemented by the United Kingdom is to achieve the economic development and protection of the ocean resources. In addition to the protection of the marine biological diversity, it also ensures the balance between the economic development, environmental protection and other social welfare.
Taiwan is surrounded by the sea and frequently generating storms, heavy rainfalls and typhoons resulting from the extreme weather of climate change has coopetition impact on the spatial usage and industry development of the sea (coastal) area in Taiwan. It also has a negative impact on the environment and further destroys the public interests of nature conservation and hinders the sustainable development of the country. The space near the junction of the land and the ocean with intense population and prosperous economic activity suffers significantly from the impact of the strong changes in the interaction effect of the land and bordered sea. In comparison with the terrestrial land planning system, the MSP has just begun the initial promotion and strongly requires a structure established for the marine spatial plan to guide the development of the marine industry.
The marine space is always subject to the dynamic changes in human activity and natural environment and has more sensitive and obvious reaction to the impact of climate change. Encountering the potential risks of global climate change on the marine environment, it is essential to establish a zoning management system for marine space and relevant early warning measures for adjustment to strengthen the governance capacity of the national ocean resources and to reduce the risk during the development of the marine industry.
The work planned for the first year of the plan is to collect the current usage status of the marine space for results analysis and propose the advance planning of the principle and system for sea area usage while utilizing related research results and suggestions as the promotion basis of research planning in the second year (including the following years). To be in line with the Sea Area Management Act (draft) of the Ocean Affairs Council, the continuation project should proceeds the study and analysis such as paid system and compensation measures of sea area use and the assignment of responsibility in the central authorities and local governments.
