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– Pasaia, Basque Country-headquartered AZTI, a science and technology center working to promote the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, has announced the creation of the Ecosystem-Based Marine Spatial Planning Assessment Tool, which aims to standardize and assist in marine planning through ecosystems-based management (EBM) principles.
According to NOAA, ecosystems-based marine management “addresses cumulative impacts and balances multiple, often conflicting, objectives across management objectives and/ or sectors. To this end, a primary goal of EBM is to balance the various interconnected needs of society and the environment.”
Though NOAA has declared its intention of moving towards EBM in its own fishery stewardship, it has acknowledged the complexity of the systemic approach.
Navigating space concerns, particularly between fisheries, aquaculture, protected sites, and the emerging wind industry, have also been a concern in the U.K. Speaking on the issue at the 2024 Responsible Seafood Summit Elspeth Macdonald, CEO of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, called for “good investment in science and evidence” in order to achieve “marine spatial planning that is flexible for the future.”
The AZTI tool is meant to address these needs, offering a standardized method to stakeholders with competing claims and interests to marine space working at various steps of the marine planning process.
AZTI research lead Ibon Galparsoro said the “tool enables a standarized assessment of plans, ensuring that they not only exist on paper but that they are implemented through measurable actions that allow for adaptive management. [It] helps evaluable whether environmental, social, economic, and governance aspects and participatory processes have been properly considered, proposing specific actions for the continuous improvement of marine space management.”
Basque communities span the Pyreneese border of Spain and France, and fish in the Bay of Biscay, where the tool has already been used to evaluable complicated cross-border marine spatial plans.
“This methodology is reproducible and can be adapted to different geographical contexts, which is vital for international collaboration in protecting our oceans," AZTI said. "The tool developed is being well accepted by the scientific community and by marine spatial planning practicioners in several European countries where it is being applied, within the framework of the MarinePlan project, and we intend to extend its use to a broader geographical context.”
–Munich, Germany-based IFCO, which produces reusable packaging for fresh food, broke records in 2024 for shipments of groceries in reusable packaging containers (RPCs) worldwide. IFCO’s business model is a circular one; its packaging is meant to be used, returned, and reused, saving consumers money, and keeping tons of packaging out of the waste stream.
In a release about the news, IFCO announced that its packaging had produced record environmental savings, including keeping 1,363,131 metric tons of solids out of the waste stream, repurposing 66,105 tons of products that would otherwise have been thrown out, and conserving 54,308 megaliters of water. All told, 674,333 metric tons of Co2 were conserved thanks to the company’s efforts.
IFCO said the firm’s Co2 savings were equivalent to avoiding the emissions produced by 140,344 trips around the earth by car.
