to formulate future strategies in the field of aquaculture, coastal tourism, and maritime services (in the form of a Maritime Hub).
Malta‟s traditional maritime economic sectors are expected to keep growing in the coming years. This includes tourism, shipping, aquaculture, oil and gas exploration and related utilities. This will not be the same for a number of emerging sectors seen elsewhere in the Mediterranean, such as renewable energy, seabed mining and biotechnology.
In spite of both technological and legislative progress to combat marine pollution, the forecasted growth of a number of maritime sectors shall continue to increase pressures and negative impacts on the local marine environment. There is therefore a risk that Malta will fail to achieve GES by 2020 for a number of the MSFD descriptors of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
The continued growth of a number of economic maritime sectors in Malta will most probably challenge the need for the EU to meet the demand made by the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Target 11, which requires at least 10% of EU waters to be within MPAs by 2020. In less than 6 years European coastal states need to designate more or less the same number of protected areas that have been established since the past 20 years at EU level. Nature Trust (Malta) is aware that Maltese authorities still need to implement effective and coherent management of existing MPA sites, as required by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. This implies that the designation of new local MPAs will be very challenging, both from a management perspective, and more importantly from the competing use of the same resources between emerging and expanding economic sectors and commercial activities.
Nature Trust (Malta) notes that the current regional demand for energy is being reflected by a fast development of offshore oil and gas exploration contracts. It is important to note that In the Mediterranean, oil exploration activities already covers more than 20% of the area, with potential new contracts targeting an additional 20%. The development of Malta‟s offshore oil and gas sector will impose additional risks to Maltese waters and to those sectors that are dependent on a healthy marine ecosystem, such as tourism, fisheries, aquaculture and production of potable water by desalination plants. The professional fisheries sector will certainly be affected due to loss of fishing grounds, fish stocks, and concentrations of contaminants in the marine food web.
This report shows that due to current gaps in knowledge and information, it is difficult to determine the full extent of sectoral interaction and their resulting cumulative impacts on the state of the marine environment. It should be noted that the combined effects of these impacts can potentially decrease the overall resilience of marine ecosystems. At the same time, current (but limited) evidence shows that the observed impacts have not yet induced large-scale changes to our marine environment; however, this is not so when the impacts are considered at a local scale, such as the case of harbours and marinas, in areas next to coastal and offshore aquaculture facilities as well as in areas next to spoil dumps. Further growth of these sectors could well lead to an amplification of such localised deterioration of the marine environment, unless adequate sustainable practices that are backed by continuous monitoring are implemented.
Nature Trust (Malta) feels that governments from neighbouring Mediterranean States should be aware of the increasing trans-boundary pressures on the
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