Environment and Security Issues in the Southern Mediterranean
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Environment and Security issues in the Southern Mediterranean Region: Exploring and Mapping the Issues by Vicken Cheterian, Otto Simonett, Raul Daussa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0.
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Foreword
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.
At times of economic crisis the conflict potential of southern Mediterranean countries is twofold: on the one hand, migrants returning home will stop sending remittances, which will jeopardize the stability of societies heavily dependant on such income; on the other hand, the former migrants will increase pressure on an already stressed environment, perhaps inducing others to migrate.
Southern Mediterranean countries are increasingly concerned about energy security too: some of them are major exporters of oil and natural gas, so any drop in demand, prompted by policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have a negative effect on their economies. At the same time scope for supplying northern neighbours with “clean” solar energy may be thwarted by some countries’ plans to develop nuclear power.
These challenges are paramount and, in our opinion, all proposed solutions must address the environmental dimension. Several international organizations and research bodies have consequently joined forces in the proposed MEDSEC partnership to explore and map environment and security in the Southern Mediterranean. Work focuses on the factors that damage the environment, ultimately affecting security, but also looks at how, on the contrary, the environment could become a catalyst for cooperation.
Three pillars of thinking and institutional cooperation form the basis of MEDSEC:
- International organizations, such as UNEP, the EU and the OSCE in addressing issues of environment and security world-wide and in Europe’s neighbourhood in particular. The ENVSEC initiative (www.envsec.org) has pioneered participatory assessment work in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
- Independent expert thinking, in particular by Vicken Cheterian from CIMERA in Geneva compiling an accessible background paper to stimulate debate on the issue.
- A mapping exercise to visually highlight the factors and issues based on input from experts from the region, supplemented by scientific literature and ‘official’ government databases. The purpose of the maps is to reveal and communicate priorities and inter-linkages in a format that is easily understandable, lending itself to swift analysis.
This all converged in a workshop ‘Participatory Assessment of Environment and Security Issues in the Southern Mediterranean Region’ organized by the Centre for International Relations and Development Studies (Fundació CIDOB) and the Barcelona International Peace Resource Center (BIPRC) in cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), UNEP GRID-Arendal and the Zoï Environment Network, which took place in Barcelona on 25-27 March 2009.
The Barcelona’s experts’ workshop was the latest of a series of meetings organized by different organizations approaching the same issues from different perspectives. The 2007 OSCE-NATO workshop on Water scarcity, land degradation and desertification in the Mediterranean region was followed by other activities by the European Union, through the European Environmental Agency and its Horizon 2020 initiative and the UNEP Mediterranean Action Plan, or the United Nations University.
The Barcelona workshop gained from the presence of these institutions, and the invaluable input provided by experts from the region.
You now have our summary before you, presenting the environment and security issues of the Southern Mediterranean in a well illustrated manner. We have also explored ways of addressing these linkages in a more comprehensive and participatory manner. Blueprints for an approach similar to the ENVSEC initiative exist elsewhere. A key factor will be the ability to mainstream knowledge rather than preaching to the converted, to explain environmental problems and potential solutions simply to non-specialists, in foreign, defence and finance ministries, and of course the world at large.
The keyword being “participatory”, an assessment of such calibre will only be possible once the countries of the region acknowledge the need for better understanding and greater awareness of the linkages between environment and security.
Otto Simonett
Zoi Environment Network, Geneva