The main objective of this part of the secondment to UFPE was to co-lead the international workshop on governance dynamics at UFPE in Recife, and to co-lead the writing session with WP3 participants and affiliated academic partners from Brazil, in Tamandare (CEPENE). The organization of the workshop was a joint effort by colleagues from UFPE, IRD, UBO and FCUL, and we have been able to foster knowledge exchange between researchers and policy practitioners, from Europe and Brazil. The two-day workshop consisted of 20 presentations, a round table debate and good Q&As.

The specific contribution of Hilde Toonen was the lead of the opening session, two presentations, and co-lead the round table debate. The two days writing session was aimed to come to a joint exploration of MSP in the Tropical Atlantic from a social science perspective. I had the lead in this workshop. In preparation, I tried to design this session in a way to nourish trust to have an open and safe environment to express thoughts and discuss differences in opinion. This is important because the meeting was both to get to know new partners and explore collaborations, and to deepen existing working relations in the PADDLE project. Fortunately, the group was very willing to participate, and we were successful in coming to a list of ideas for papers, each shared by at least two partners in the PADDLE project.

This provides fertile ground to forward project collaboration and publishing, which are common goals for WP3 participants. We also discussed the ambition to publish a high-impact paper. Personally, I was also able to establish and strenghten partnerships, and have concrete leads for collaborations with IRD, UBO, UFPA and MacKenzie. The stay in Tamandare showed the relevance of this place as a case study for MSP in Brazil, which will also benefit to the secondments of my colleagues of Wageningen University.

Betty Queffelec : Presentation of a work on « Maritime Spatial Planning within EU integrated maritime policy ». Coordination of the session 2 dedicated to MSP in Europe. Organization, with Dr. Hilde Toonen, the final round table debate about MSP objectives.

The topic of fisheries and MSP has been identified as matter of main interest topic to develop comparative research to which we could associate Hilde Toonen and Solange Da Silva. After the workshop, the team members analysed the results together to launch several publications. This work contributed to develop a critical review of practices including fisheries in MSP which will feed the task 3.1 and 3.3.