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Thematic Maps

MEDSEC Publication launch

We are very happy to invite you to the launch of the report on environment and security issues in the southern Mediterranean. It will take place on Friday, 20. November from 12.30 to 14.00 at the International Environment House 2 in Châtelaine, Geneva.

For more information click here

Mapping exercise

mappingexerciseThese maps were produced at gatherings of regional specialists (environmentalists, teachers, representatives of UN organizations, journalists, etc.). Using blank or topographic maps to guide them, we asked them to name and locate as precisely as possible what they see as major environment and security issues. This results in subjective maps, that are neither comprehensive or highly accurate, but reflect the sensibilities of the audience assembled on a particular day.

MEDSEC Publication launch

MEDSEC_launch_leafletMapping environmental security issues in the southern Mediterranean

If not addressed and resolved, environmental problems – water shortages, land degradation, pollution – can become security threats. In this respect the Mediterranean is one of the world’s most vulnerable areas. Its basic climatic and environmental features, combined with its cultural, geopolitical and economic complexity, have high potential for social and political instability. If the economic disparity between north and south continues to increase and if the impacts of climate change on the region turn out as predicted, the risk of conflict will affect the whole region, perhaps the whole world.

A newly launched synthesis report makes these complex issues better understandable to decision-makers and a more general public: The concise analysis by Vicken Cheterian, an inependent, Geneva-based historian integrates the regional environmental and security, political and economical discourse. The text is complemented by a set of highly communicative, esthetically attractive maps making the complications visible and understandable ‘at a glance’. Some of the maps created by environmental cartographers Emmannuelle Bournay and Matthias Beilstein go beyond the usual geographical and statistical facts and figures, also working with the perceptions and opinions of stakeholders participating in ‘mapping exercises’.

Various international organizations and more than 30 experts from both rims of the Mediterranean Sea have supported this innovative approach to analyze and communicate, eventually contribute to finding solutions to persistent problems.

Obviously much more work is needed. Besides the overall need to rethink existing paradigms concerning the Mediterranean, the report makes also concrete suggestions on how to ‘zoom in’ on identified environment and security ‘hot spots’. The formula of participatory consultations, expert analysis and cartographic communication needs to be brought to the region, to the field.

For this a MEDSEC partnership is being proposed. A circle of organizations, institutions and research centres engaged in addressing environment and security issues in the Southern Mediterranean.