Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) has emerged as a cornerstone of ocean governance in Europe, aimed at managing competing maritime uses while promoting ecological sustainability and socioeconomic equity. Yet, despite policy advancements, spatial economic integration remains a persistent blind spot particularly in assessing how benefits and trade-offs are distributed across sectors and regions. This thesis addresses that critical gap by applying the Spatial Economic Benefit Analysis (SEBA) tool to map and evaluate the socioeconomic footprint of two key marine sectors offshore wind and capture fisheries in France, with a focused case study on the North Atlantic-Western Channel (NAMO) façade.
Using a mixed-methods approach grounded in publicly available data, industry disclosures, and spatial visualization techniques, this research develops regional-scale economic maps that illustrate the spatial distribution of employment, firm participation, infrastructure, and financial viability. The offshore wind sector is analyzed both at the project level through detailed firm mapping of the Yeu-Noirmoutier, Saint-Nazaire, and Saint-Brieuc wind farms and at the national scale, revealing concentration patterns, transboundary economic flows, and asymmetries in value chain participation. For the fisheries sector, the analysis incorporates multidimensional indicators including fleet decline, auction center distribution, employment shifts, and structural financial dependence, highlighting regions of acute vulnerability.
The results show that offshore wind benefits are often spatially diffuse and internationally distributed, while fisheries benefits remain highly localized yet increasingly marginalized within current MSP frameworks. This research demonstrates that SEBA offers a scalable, policy-relevant tool for visualizing trade-offs, identifying benefit asymmetries, and supporting more inclusive, data-informed spatial planning. The study’s findings have direct implications for the equitable implementation of France’s MSP strategy and contribute novel methodological insights to the global discourse on spatial justice, stakeholder representation, and sustainable blue economy governance.
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