A Novel Best Practices Approach: the MARLISCO Case
Presented at the Global Congress on ICM: Lessons Learned to Address New Challenges (MEDCOAST 2013)
By: Xenia I. Loizidou, Michael I. Loizides and Demetra Orthodoxou
Abstract
MARLISCO ‘Marine Litter in Europe Seas: Social Awareness and Co-Responsibility’, is an FP-7 funded project that aims to develop and evaluate an approach that can be used to address the problems associated with marine litter and that can be applied more widely to other societal challenges. Considering that marine litter is a key threat to marine habitats, MARLISCO aims to achieve substantial benefits through better integration among researchers, stakeholders and society.
One of the project aims is to identify best practices that can effectively minimise the amount of marine litter in European Seas. In MARLISCO, best practices were approached in a novel and smart way, trying to get the most impacts and added value for the innovative character of the project. Best practices served as a tool to identify the most implementable practices to be promoted, and also to enhance the active participation and capacity building of key actors through the implementation of an innovative decision support method.
In the framework of the MARLISCO project, each partner was tasked with identifying best practices for the reduction of marine litter. Thus a dedicated template was developed, which also served as a way of recognising and emphasising the key characteristics of a successful practice, and those attributes that are necessary for making any practice a ‘best’ practice. The 72 best practices proposed by the MARLISCO partnership have been evaluated through the DeCyDe-4-Marlisco decision support tool.
The process for the evaluation and analysis of best practices and the involvement of key actors, took place in Cyprus from February 2013 to May 2013. A detailed mapping of marine litter stakeholders took place, and the dedicated decision support tool DeCyDe-4-Marlisco was developed and implemented. The key actors and stakeholder panel was set up, the evaluation criteria were defined, DeCyDe-4-Marlisco matrices were prepared and the evaluation process took place with the participation of the key actors, which demanded the achievement of consensus for each decision. The method uses a numerical approach that quantifies the results, rather than simply providing qualitative indications, so that at the end of the assessment, each best practice is assigned an overall score. This means that the user can easily check what would happen if the scoring of a best practice is changed for one or more of the criteria. The evaluation of the MARLISCO best practices, implementing the DeCyDe-4-Marlisco tool, identified five interesting attributes, as “preferences” for a successful marine litter management practice:
- Preference in preventative measures rather than mitigating actions
- Preference in practices with high degree of social responsibility
- Preference in initiatives that involve the public and promote active citizenship
- The support of the local administration has been considered as indication for sustainability
- Monitoring of the implementation of each practice is crucial. It is important to have data/information in order to record and document the impact of a best practice, which otherwise is hard to assess.
The paper also presents a snapshot of the key attributes of the recorded best practices as a means of helping the reader, and particularly decision makers, recognise the characteristics that will make their marine litter management efforts more successful.
Full article available upon request.