The images of the muddy and devastated streets of several towns in the Valencia metropolitan area, in Spain, had a strong impact on people’s minds after the violent floods of October 29 which killed 210 people, according to a still provisional report. The scale of the disaster could, however, prove minimal in the face of future threats facing the Mediterranean basin due to climate change. As COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, enters its second week, 55 experts from MedECC networkcoming from 17 countries, are publishing this Monday, November 18, an inventory of climate and environmental risks affecting coastal areas in the Mediterranean.
Increasing marine heat waves, plastic pollution, rising sea levels that are still too neglected… The risks run by the States bordering this intercontinental sea are numerous and ever more intense. “As global warming progresses, coastal, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems will reach their adaptation limits, particularly in 3°C scenarios in the north, and even sooner in the south and east,” warn the authors. Italian diplomat Grammenos Mastrojeni, deputy secretary general of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), also warns: “We are at the start of a cycle which risks experiencing exponential acceleration, not only in the violence of events , but above all in their unpredictability.” Interview.
L’Express: The Mediterranean is a hotspot for global climate change. The latest MedECC special report provides a worrying inventory of all the risks around the basin, and their management which will be increasingly difficult. Scenarios like the recent floods in Valenciain Spain, will they become a new normal?
Grammenos Mastrojeni: Let me start with a foundation: we are who we are because of the presence of this sea. The Mediterranean, this large body of water that is not oceanic, has served as a climate stabilizer for thousands of years. It provided us with an environment favorable to productivity and guaranteed the predictability of climatic cycles. These are some of the reasons why the most important revolution in history, the agricultural revolution, mainly happened in our region. It is only in a place where we know more or less when it is going to rain that we can begin to design agriculture, organize the territory, etc.
This function of the Mediterranean is now reversed. Instead of being an engine of stability, it becomes an engine of chaos. It is the fastest warming sea in the world. The consequences are therefore very serious. You talked about a new normal. Unfortunately, it would be nice if this was a new normal. But we are just at the beginning of a cycle which risks experiencing exponential acceleration, not only in the violence of events, but above all in their unpredictability. Agriculture will suffer, but not only: water distribution to urban centers, infrastructure planning, etc.
THE extreme events will multiply on the Mediterranean coasts due to climate change. Is the worst yet to come?
They are what attracts the public’s attention. But there is something much more dangerous, I repeat, even if it does not necessarily cause immediate victims: the climate is less and less predictable. Without this, we have difficulty organizing our production, our societies. There is this very violent side of the extreme phenomena that will strike, but the unpredictability side is just as impressive. It is even very dangerous for our identity. We are the people of the agricultural revolution. Our region has been luckier – and perhaps that’s why we’ve historically been a little more visible than average – but that luck is over. That’s the bad part. There’s a good one: the threat is so serious that it’s starting to shake things up. Among the threats, I would also like to highlight one that I find particularly neglected: as the Mediterranean is the sea that is warming the fastest, it is also the one whose level is rising the fastest.
The report rightly points out the fact that future sea level rise is not sufficiently taken into account in protection policies…
Exactly, and it’s very serious. A rise of one meter, or even a little more, is expected before the end of the century. This temporary horizon seems psychologically distant to us, and therefore does not seem to concern us. But we are talking about an increase of around twenty centimeters in around fifteen years. This isn’t really scary if you think of the problem as just water flooding a few lands, unless you’re concerned about wonderful, fragile cities like Venice or Alexandria. But the situation is worse, since it involves salt water submerging the coastal plains. The Romans said that if you wanted to subjugate a population, you had to defeat it in war; and that if we never wanted to hear about it again, we had to scatter salt on our fields. That is to say, sterilizing the lands and aquifers. This is what will happen with climate change.
In the coastal plains of the Mediterranean region, part of food security may be compromised. There are places that are particularly delicate: river deltas. We know it in Italy in the Po delta, also in Spain, but especially in Egypt. Most of the country’s food security is concentrated in the Nile Delta. A rise in sea level of around twenty centimeters could end productivity there.
Population growth on the coasts will increase, according to the report, which even mentions, by 2100, a risk of permanent displacement for 20 million people due to rising sea levels. This is enormous. .
And it’s a conservative figure, because it only takes direct travel into account. But one move causes another. So if we do this kind of calculation, it’s much more than 20 million people. There are so many problems linked to rising sea levels: erosion, tourist activity, conservation of cultural heritage… The Greeks, for example, know this very well: there are already cases submergence of archaeological heritage. All this risks being a little geostrategic bomb.
This report also draws the sad observation that actions are largely insufficient to guarantee the well-being of populations and the sustainability of resources.
As things stand, this is the plain truth. An extreme event such as that of Valencia strikes people’s minds, but a dynamic that is not perceived on a daily basis motivates a little less to action… We know this and we seek to make things happen. The Union for the Mediterranean is establishing an integrated regional system to deal with this threat which is not really integrated into the concerns.
Can we say that the Mediterranean is suffering all the harmful consequences of climate change?
Each region of the world depends on the climate in its own way. Some, at the moment, find themselves in an even more serious socio-economic position. For example, desertification in the Sahel, with the shrinking of Lake Chad: it is absolutely devastating for the local population. The rise of Boko Haram is very linked to this situation. In the Mediterranean area, we have already seen consequences beyond the climatic facts themselves. The Arab Spring, for example, had a climatic component in its causes. As is the destabilization in Syria. So yes, we are suffering our share of the consequences of climate change, and they are quite harsh. But everyone suffers.
COP29 is underway, and discussions are difficult around the issue of financial aid to developing countries. Doesn’t the Mediterranean basin, between the North on one side and the South and the East on the other, represent in miniature the global tensions surrounding climate change?
Yes and no. On the one hand, it is true that there are big differences: the Mediterranean is a very asymmetrical sea from an economic, democratic, etc. point of view. Among the members of our organization, there are obviously discrepancies which are also reflected in the negotiations. But we all recognized one thing: even if it is a sea where there are rich and poor, fragile and strong, no one has, on their own, the sufficient means to deal with a crisis of ‘such scale and speed. If we come together, we end up with a much wider range of solutions.
Energy is an emblematic case. We have launched a dynamic aimed at integrating energy systems and markets around the basin. The starting point is a very simple observation: the European Union must decarbonize by 2050. However, this objective is impossible to achieve without taking into account the solar potential of the South or the hydraulic potential of the Balkans. Except that the latter cannot develop and would not have sufficient financing by relying solely on their domestic market. There are interesting complementarities.
This also applies to agri-food systems. In a few years, southern Europe will have the same climate as the southern Mediterranean – a climate to which we are not adapted and which we do not know how to manage. We are therefore beginning to witness a kind of sectoral putting aside: we discuss, we argue on many subjects, but on the climate, we know well that we have common interests and that we must accelerate.
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