IHCantabria will coordinate the drafting of the Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander

The project for the development of the Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander has been presented today to the members of the “Mesa de la Bahía”, made up of the main public administrations involved in the management of the Bay of Santander and the University of Cantabria as scientific advisor.

The Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander, also called ‘Plan Bahía’, will respond to the General Action Protocol signed in 2019 by all members of the “Mesa de la Bahía”: Government Delegation, General Directorate of the Coast and Sea, Port Authority of Santander, Government of Cantabria and municipalities of Santander, Camargo, El Astillero, Marina de Cudeyo and Ribamontán al Mar.

The ‘General Protocol of Action between the Competent Administrations in the Management of the Bay of Santander’ established the framework for collaboration to develop a management project involving all agents and all areas. An Integral Plan for the Management of the Bay that, as stated in the document: “Will establish and implement, as far as possible, the necessary measures to guarantee the fulfillment of the economic, environmental, social, cultural and recreational objectives of the Bay of Santander, taking into consideration the current natural dynamics and the context of climate change”.

Plan Bahía’ is a research project coordinated by the Environmental Hydraulics Institute of the University of Cantabria (IHCantabria) and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Government of Cantabria through the Marine Sciences Program. Its objective is to draw up the Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander, which will establish the collaboration mechanisms and the measures to be implemented so that the institutions that make up the “Mesa de la Bahía” can address the future actions to be developed within the framework of an Integral Plan for the Management of the Bay.

The design of the Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander will follow the guidelines set by the European Directive 2014/89/EU, which aims to establish a regulatory framework for the planning and management of maritime space in the waters of EU member countries.

In order to comply with the European Directive, the development of the ‘Plan Bahía’ will begin with a public participation process, structured in activities for all audiences, workshops, sectoral roundtables and an online consultation. In the initial phase, the IHCantabria researchers coordinating the project will analyze in detail the socioeconomic, environmental and morphodynamic evolution of the estuary and will study the regulations applicable in the Bay of Santander.

Based on these studies and the social perception derived from the participation process, the second phase of the project will consist of the preparation of the Integrated Diagnosis of the Bay of Santander.

The last phase of the project, to be developed throughout 2024, will consist of the drafting of the Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander. In this phase, possible management alternatives applicable to the estuary will be identified and evaluated. Physical-environmental measures and interventions will be defined to improve the resilience of the estuary’s ecosystems, including participatory decision-making mechanisms with institutions and other sectors. And a strategy will be proposed for the implementation of measures and the elaboration and signing of agreements for the application of the Integrated Management Plan.

The meeting of the “Mesa de la Bahia” held today at the headquarters of IHCantabria, which was attended by representatives of the institutions involved in the management of the Bay of Santander, marks the beginning of the ‘Plan Bahía’ project, whose development will extend until September 2025, when the projects financed by the Marine Science Program will be completed.

The Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander will be designed as a dynamic tool, capable of evolving and adapting to environmental, morphodynamic, economic and social changes in order to offer the best scientific-technical support to the administrations that hold the management powers of the estuary, so that they can study and, where appropriate, address the implementation of the different measures included in the ‘Bahia Plan’.