The way ahead

The synthesis presented in the first MEDSEC report is a regional snapshot of priority linkages between environment and security in the Southern Mediterranean region. It reflects approaches and methodologies used by international organizations in other regions of the world, the opinion of an independent expert analyst and the interactions of a group of experts at the MEDSEC Barcelona workshop in March 2009 both discussing the environment and security issues and participating in a mapping exercise. We thus are not aiming at completeness but with the report we want to initiate thinking around pertinent issues in the region and also motivate actors at all level – international, regional and local - to take actions to resolve some of the problems.

As a next step, we will need to zoom in, to move the assessment to the national and local level. For this we propose a participatory environment and security assessment and mapping approach with in-country consultations with a strong involvement of the Governments (different sectors such as the environment, natural resources, foreign and internal affairs, health, defence and national security), the academia and civil society. Ideally, neigbours ought to know and be involved as well, with the highly complex political relations in the region we would propose a more cautious country by country approach. The time for broader regional consultations may just be premature with some of the core national interests at stake or at least on the table.

The results of these more in-depth assessment will include national priorities - which may be regional priorities as well and ‘hot-spots’ where (a) action is needed to reduce/ eliminate security risks which concern environment-related problems, or where (b) environmental cooperation can strengthen overall cooperation and dialogue between countries and communities. Sometimes, just talking about the issue or putting a dot on a map may advance what has not moved for years earlier.

The results of the national assessments and follow-up activities will at one stage need to feed into a regional work programme both as inputs to diplomacy and also more hands-on projects contributing to resolving the environment and security problems. How these next steps could concretely look like is outlined in the text box below. The role of the MEDSEC partnership would focus on assessment and communication to ensure that these issues would be mainstreamed, and above all non-environmentalist both at the institutional and at the individual level would better understand and better take care of environment and security issues.

Next steps MEDSEC: