Inclusion of the 'Youth Voice for Nature' in Regional Marine Planning

The Scottish Government has set out a long-term ambition for Scotland's Blue Economy to 2045. This vision sees our marine environment as maintaining economic prosperity for the nation and playing an important role in ensuring human wellbeing, but that this should be done in a way that protects and enhances our marine assets. The vision also recognises that to do this, we need to transform the way that we manage our 'blue' resources, in a way that is ambitious yet also inclusive.

There has, to date, been inadequate attention paid to what an inclusive and just marine governance might look like. The adoption of UN Convention of the Law of the Sea in 1982 created optimism for marginalised groups such as indigenous peoples and coastal communities that they may (re)gain control of marine resources, yet this has not yet occurred. Indeed, marginalisation and exclusion of various groups in marine planning processes continues today.
We know that securing public engagement in consultation processes, and the wider planning and management of our seas is a significant challenge. This is for many reasons, including poor communication and perceptions that processes are deliberately exclusionary, a lack of ocean literacy, resource intensity of the process, and the domination of top-down processes. When engagement is successful, such processes tend to be dominated by well-established (often older) voices; generally representing vested interests.

Despite the environment (particularly climate change) and biodiversity being regularly cited as one of the major concerns of younger people, youth voices do not feature regularly in marine planning decisions and processes. This is in contravention to international agreements on environmental sustainability, with the role of youth being recognised in several of the SDGs including education (SDG4) and reduction of inequalities (SDG11). If the Scottish Government is to achieve their ambitious vision for Scotland's Blue Economy in a way that is not only sustainable but also inclusive and equitable, then marine planning must consider how to incorporate the youth voice.

This project will explore governance mechanisms and engagement processes that might be used to increase youth voices, including the testing of softer measures and potential good practice. It will analyse existing processes, looking to the past and present, and explore ways in which engagement processes may be adapted to ensure the 'youth voice for nature' is included into the future.

This project will take a case study approach to investigating options for the inclusion of the 'youth voice for nature' in regional marine planning. Three potential mechanisms will be analysed: a) Scottish Youth Parliament (currently tentative); b) Young Scottish Sea Changers Charity; c) Regional Marine Planning Partnerships (Clyde and Western Isles - tentative interest expressed for the latter).

A desk-based policy/regulatory analysis will investigate the barriers and incentives to youth voice inclusion for each of the case study mechanisms. Interviews with regional marine planning stakeholders will take a deep dive into past and present experiences of youth voice inclusion. Focus group workshops with young people, including members of the Scottish Youth Parliament and Young Scottish Sea Changers will provide an honest reflection on ocean literacy levels, access to decision-making and preferred approaches.

The findings will be synthesised to identify the lessons learnt across the three mechanisms to develop recommended processes and methods for inclusion of the 'youth voice for nature'. These lessons will be taken up in the CASE component with NatureScot towards the end of the project - identifying how to build upon and move forward 'Reroute', Scotland's Youth Biodiversity Panel.