Editorial: Navigating change: Transformative approaches in ocean planning

Marine and coastal systems are increasingly shaped by multiple, interacting pressures arising from human activities and climate change, challenging existing governance frameworks to deliver sustainable and equitable outcomes. Policy initiatives such as the European Green Deal, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, and Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive have established ambitious goals for ecosystem-based management, yet their implementation often reveals persistent fragmentation across sectors, scales, and institutions. The contributions to this Research Topic, Navigating change: Transformative approaches in ocean planning, collectively explore how marine governance can evolve toward more coherent, inclusive, and science-policy-integrated approaches. Taken together, they suggest that transformative ocean planning depends on interconnected changes in three areas: how knowledge is generated and integrated, how policies and institutions are coordinated, and how stakeholders and diverse knowledge systems are involved in planning and decision-making. The seven contributions to the Research Topic primarily document the enabling conditions and early steps required for such transformation, rather than evidence of transformation already achieved.

Knowledge generation and integration

A central thread emerging from these studies is the need to strengthen the analytical foundations that underpin ecosystem-based MSP. Advances in cumulative effects assessment (Esquerré et al.) demonstrate how long-standing methodological limitations can be addressed by refining the way pressures from maritime activities are quantified and interpreted. By incorporating magnitude-weighted relationships between activities and the pressures they generate, and by introducing an “unsuitability” metric based on ecosystem sensitivities, recent work enhances the capacity of these tools to produce more decision-relevant outputs. While these refinements do not fundamentally alter overall spatial patterns, they significantly improve the interpretability and practical applicability of results, particularly when applied at finer spatial resolutions. This highlights the importance of aligning analytical precision with the spatial scale of planning challenges, especially in geographically constrained areas where management decisions demand higher levels of accuracy.

At the same time, the contributions underscore that technical improvements alone are insufficient without a deeper integration of social and ecological dimensions. The operationalisation of social–ecological indicators represents a critical step forward in this regard (Armoskaite et al.). By embedding indicators within the DAPSI(W)R(M) framework and explicitly linking ecosystem changes to human wellbeing, this research reveals the limited extent to which existing indicators currently capture these interconnections. The identification of pathways for developing compound, digitally ready indicators is particularly relevant in the context of emerging Digital Twin initiatives (such as SEADITO), where integrated data infrastructures are expected to play a transformative role in marine governance and planning. Such developments point toward a future where ecosystem-based management is supported by dynamic, interconnected indicators capable of reflecting both environmental conditions and societal outcomes.

Policy and institutional dimension

Beyond methodological considerations, this Research Topic places as well emphasis on the persistent gap between policy ambition and on-the-ground implementation. Empirical analyses from the French Mediterranean (Bastide and Ramirez-Monsalve) and the wider Mediterranean basin (Gorjanc et al.) demonstrate that while European policy frameworks are relatively coherent at higher levels in their environmental objectives, this coherence often diminishes during implementation due to administrative complexity, fragmented governance structures, and limited institutional capacity. Local authorities in both studies can face overlapping mandates, resource constraints, and insufficient mechanisms for stakeholder engagement, all of which hinder effective policy delivery. Nevertheless, these challenges are accompanied by examples of innovation, including multi-actor governance platforms, specialized institutional arrangements, and territorially grounded restoration strategies that enhance coordination and collaboration. Such practices illustrate the potential for local adaptation to bridge systemic gaps, provided that enabling conditions, such as capacity building and institutional support, are in place.

Complementing these case-based insights, the identification of archetypal patterns of barriers and enablers provides a broader understanding of the structural drivers of policy (in)coherence (Trubbach et al.). Fragmented governance roles, weak coordination across the land–sea interface, and insufficient integration across policy domains emerge as recurrent obstacles, while harmonized data systems, knowledge-sharing platforms, and inclusive stakeholder engagement are highlighted as key enabling factors. These findings reinforce the need for governance systems that are not only better aligned in design but also more adaptive and interconnected in practice, capable of responding to the complexity and dynamic nature of marine socio–ecological systems.

The alignment of MSP with overarching sustainability agendas is another important dimension addressed in this Research Topic. An operational framework was developed to assess the extent to which existing Maritime Spatial Plans contribute to the European Green Deal (Bocci et al.). Applied across several EU countries, it revealed both progress and remaining gaps in integrating sustainability objectives into planning processes. While climate change mitigation is widely reflected, largely through the expansion of offshore renewable energy, other priorities, such as ecosystem restoration, circular economy, and zero pollution, remain less consistently operationalized. This uneven integration highlights the need to move beyond declarative commitments toward concrete, measurable actions, supported by frameworks that enable systematic assessment, comparison, and iterative improvement of planning outcomes over time.

Societal engagement

Crucially, the contributions also emphasize the importance of re-centering governance around inclusive and participatory approaches. The case study from the United States Virgin Islands (Grace-McCaskey et al.) demonstrates how community-based coral and mangrove restoration workshops can function as powerful sites for co-producing knowledge, integrating local ecological understanding, and fostering culturally responsive restoration strategies. Participants' prioritization of ecological function, local livelihoods, and intergenerational engagement challenges conventional, top-down models of decision-making and points toward more relational and community-driven forms of governance. These insights underscore that participation is not merely a procedural requirement but a transformative component of effective and legitimate marine management.

Conclusions and recommendations

Taken together, the studies show that advancing ocean planning, coastal management, and governance under accelerating environmental and socio-economic changes requires methodological innovation, institutional reform, and meaningful societal engagement. The contributions identify key enabling conditions and practical pathways, including stronger social–ecological knowledge integration and tools, more coherent and implementable policies, greater coordination across sectors and scales, strengthened local capacity, and more inclusive and adaptive planning processes.

These insights remain pivotal to the continued evolution of ecosystem-based and transformative ocean planning in Europe and beyond.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Footnotes

Edited and reviewed by: Sebastian Christoph Alexander Ferse, IPB University, Indonesia