Mediterranean Initiative
Our world today is increasingly shaped by ecological constraints— constraints that are being felt in the form of climate change, water scarcity, urban crowding, declining fisheries, food crises, and soaring energy costs. Now more than ever, successful governance depends upon proactive management and tracking of an economy’s availability of and demand on natural resources.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Mediterranean region. In 2010, the Mediterranean region was rocked by an economic crisis resulting from overextension of financial resources. But Greece, Italy and other countries of the Mediterranean face another yawning deficit – an ecological deficit – that poses deep-seeded risks to the region’s long-term success.
Mediterranean countries have become more ecologically fragile. Our Footprint results for 2006 show that three quarters of humanity and almost all people in the Mediterranean region lived in countries that were demanding more biocapacity for their final consumption than they had available within their borders. As shown in the map below, most countries human demand on nature (the Ecological Footprint shown below as the red circles) is exceeding what the country’s ecosystem can supply (the “biocapacity” shown as the green circles).
Global Footprint Network’s Mediterranean Initiative, launched in June 2010 in partnership with WWF’s Mediterranean Programme Office, UNESCO, Plan Bleu and Tour Du Valat, is an effort to bring leaders together to develop a regional approach to managing resource-dependence and biocapacity. Among the goals of the Mediterranean Initiative is to bring the reality of resource constraints into the national and international policy debate. The initiative will provide decision-makers with key Ecological Footprint and biocapacity data to inform policy issues. It aims to help leaders understand: what are the key resource issues faced by Mediterranean countries, and how can the region work collectively to manage resource consumption and natural capital?
Read Global Footprint Network’s report The Future of the Mediterranean: Tracking Ecological Footprint Trends (Interim report for comment)
Download pdf (36 MB) |
The Mediterranean Initiative was launched at Footprint Forum 2010, which was held in Colle di Val d’Elsa, Italy, just outside of Siena, Italy. June 7-12 2010. Presentations and a full book of abstracts from the forum can be downloaded here.
Collaborators:
WWF Mediterranean Initiative
Our goal is to conserve the natural wealth of the Mediterranean and to promote sustainable environment-friendly practices for the benefit of all. The geographical scope of the WWF Mediterranean Programme includes all countries bordering the Mediterranean as well as Jordan, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Portugal. The WWF Mediterranean Programme Office is based in Rome, Italy, with a project office in Tunisia, the Across The Waters capacity building programme in Barcelona, Spain, and a project coordinator in Morocco. WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world’s biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.
UNESCO Venice Office
UNESCO Venice focuses its action in science and culture of Member States of South-East Europe as a priority, and develops initiatives in favour of Central Europe and the Mediterranean basin in close consultation with the other UNESCO offices concerned. UNESCO works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. It is through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO’s mission and activities.
Plan Bleu
For over 30 years and within a context of growing international action for the environment, the 21 states bordering on the Mediterranean and the European Community have together been developing an original mechanism for environmental regional cooperation within the framework of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Mediterranean Action Plan (UNEP/MAP). Plan Bleu is one of the stakeholders involved in this cooperation. One of the main tasks with which it is entrusted is to produce information and knowledge in order to alert decision-takers and other stakeholders to environmental risks and sustainable development issues in the Mediterranean, and to shape future scenarios to guide decision-taking processes.
Tour Du Valat
Tour Du Valat is a research center for the conservation of Mediterranean wetlands. Convinced that it will only be possible to preserve wetlands if human activities and the protection of the natural heritage can be reconciled, the Tour du Valat has for many years developed programmes of research and integrated management that promote interchanges between wetland users and scientists.