Sustainable development of recreational ports in the Eastern Gulf of Finland from the stakeholders' perspective

Recreational boating is an important cultural ecosystem service, gaining more and more popularity in the Gulf of Finland. Its attractiveness being highly dependent on the healthy ecosystem, it is significant to pay attention to the sustainability of the related activities, such as the port business. In this paper, we study how stakeholders communicate and think about the concept of sustainability in the context of recreational boating, especially the development of recreational ports. Involving stakeholders in the decision making is
important to utilize the ecosystem services in a sustainable and justice way. Based on interviews and following content analysis, concept maps were created and compared between two groups: boaters and port actors. The concept of sustainable development is theoretically seen to consist of three main pillars: environmental, economic and social perspectives, which should be acknowledged in a balanced manner. According to our results, stakeholders agree on the existence and importance of these three pillars, but they often emphasize one over the others. Many port actors stress the importance of
sustainable economy and especially boaters seem to underline the safety. Environment is also seen to be important and to protect it the importance of increasing the environmental consciousness is emphasized too.