• English
  • Français
  • العربية
Follow us
Union for the Mediterranean – UfMUnion for the Mediterranean – UfMUnion for the Mediterranean – UfMUnion for the Mediterranean – UfM     Mediterranean Day
  • Who we are
    • Who we are

      The Union for the Mediterranean is an intergovernmental institution bringing together the European Union Member States and 15 countries from the Southern and Eastern shores of the Mediterranean to promote dialogue and cooperation.

      Overview   

    • Who we are

      • Member States
      • Meet the team
      • Partners
      • History
    • Key documents

      UfM Annual Report 2021 Regional Integration
  • What we do
    • Notre action

      The UfM seeks to enhance regional cooperation, dialogue and the implementation of concrete projects and initiatives with tangible impact on our citizens to address three strategic objectives: human development, stability and integration.

      Overview   

    • Human development

      • Economic Development and Employment
      • Higher Education & Research
      • Social & Civil Affairs

      Sustainable development

      • Water, Environment and Blue Economy
      • Transport & Urban Development
      • Energy & Climate Action
    • How we work

      • Political Framework
      • Regional Dialogue Platforms
      • Projects and Initiatives
  • Work with us
    • The UfM Secretariat is the operational platform of the Union for the Mediterranean. The staff of the UfM is made of more than 17 nationalities working in a multicultural environment that fosters cooperation and intercultural communication and exchange.

    • Work with us

      • Vacancies
      • Secondments
      • Internships
      • Procurement
      • Roster of experts
  • Info center
    • Info center

      Find our latest press releases, press invitations, visual identity, key institutional documents, photos and other relevant information


      Download the UfM Visual Identity Guidelines and Logos (zip file)   

    • Info center

      • Media corner
      • News
      • Agenda
      • Publications and key documents
      • Human Stories of the Mediterranean
    • UfM in the Media

      24 June 2022- Express FM: لقاء مع السفير ناصر كامل، أمين عام الاتحاد من أجل المتوسط على هامش منتدى تونس للاستثمار
      View article
      19 May 2022- 2M-Edition Spéciale-Nasser Kamel insiste sur l´importance de s´adapter aux nouvelles réalités de l´emploi.
      View article
      10 May 2022- Ad-Dustour- أمين عام الاتحاد من أجل المتوسط: ارتفاع منسوب البحر سيخفي ملايين الهكتارات
      File Download document
      View article
      See more
  • Contact

Climate: The Mediterranean Kettle

Climate: The Mediterranean Kettle

By Grammenos Mastrojeni, Union for the Mediterranean Deputy Secretary General

The op-ed was published in Jeune Afrique, New Europe, Masrawy and Materia Rinnovabile

The transmission belt between scientific discoveries and public awareness often gets jammed due to problems of language and diffusion channels. However, certain alarms cannot be ignored: a study just published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences warns about the acceleration of ocean warming and it is almost disarming to observe the rhetorical artifice with which scientists have struggled to make themselves understood by all: last year was absorbed by the seas – they claimed – enough extra heat to boil about 1.3 billion kettles (kettles aside, the upper layer of the oceans to a depth of 1.24 miles – 2 kilometers – absorbed last year 20 Zettajoules more than in 2019). Metaphorically, it is a tragic confirmation of the extreme risk we seem to remove from our thoughts, and the researchers – people generally neutral in language – have argued that rising temperatures represent an existential threat to humanity, which continues despite the drop in emissions linked to COVID last year.

In fact, the ocean acts as a retardant flywheel for global warming, absorbing over 90% of the additional heat generated by the greenhouse effect and then gradually releasing it throughout the entire system. We don’t see oceans as a priority because we are a land species. But ocean warming brings natural disasters to our mainland, on the rise as the fires that raged in Australia and the Amazon in 2020, linked to the highest ocean temperatures recorded in 65 years, measured from surface level to a depth of 1.24 miles.

Given the vastness, we can imagine how much energy the ocean can absorb and contain, and how large the impact is when it is subsequently released slowly: warmer oceans make storms more powerful, especially typhoons and hurricanes, and a warmer atmosphere also promotes heavier rainfall in all storms, increasing the risk of flooding and, conversely, extreme fires such as those seen in 2020. We must therefore expect steadily growing impacts on our lives and most importantly take action now, to prepare and adapt, as the delayed response of the ocean to global warming means that the changes will last for several decades and will keep increasing.

But in this overall worrying picture, the danger is concentrated on one of the most delicate and entangled crossroads of interests and balances, crucial for the world community at large, the Mediterranean. Of all the areas analyzed in detail in this research, the Mediterranean is the water mass that shows the highest rate of warming in recent years, confirming what was already found in the Report on the State of the Ocean of the European Marine Service Copernicus of 2016 and 2018, continuing a process that began about thirty years ago but with a higher increase than in other oceanic areas.

These results intersect – in the data considered and in the alarming conclusions – with those of the recent Report, “Risks associated to climate and environmental changes in the Mediterranean region” just released by MedECC, the network that brings together Mediterranean experts on climate and environmental change. Beyond sea in itself, it considers the Mediterranean area in its various dimensions and highlights that – while the waters of our sea are the ones that warm up most rapidly – the region as a whole is the second in the world for the rapid progress of warming. In the Mediterranean, the average temperature compared to the pre-industrial era has in fact increased by 1.5 C and warming proceeds 20% faster than the global average. If not countered by mitigation interventions, some areas are therefore set to record increases of up to 2.2 C in 2040, and 3.8 in 2100, with catastrophic implications for a Mediterranean population that has grown exponentially in the meantime.

There will be destabilizing consequences. For example, our sea level is expected to rise by 20 cm by 2050, which may seem few but would salinize vast coastal plains and the Nile delta, upsetting the livelihoods of millions of people; or an increase in the population exposed to water precariousness up to 250 million people. And the fact that a warmer sea is a long-term driving force for a warmer atmosphere means that the problem will accompany us for a long time and will worsen even in the most idyllic and virtuous scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation.

We need to prepare for these and many other consequences. But limiting oneself to taking measures of one or another direct impact means not understanding that an overarching value is at stake: the identity and unity of the millenary community that thrived around the Mediterranean and its constructive relationships beyond, looking East and South.

Observing the planisphere, one realizes that the idea of ​​Europe – as a continent in its own right – represents an anomaly. Using the criteria of delimitation of the continents applied for all the others, Europe should not exist: it is only a small tip of Asia. And yet, Europe continues to feel like a continent apart. What sets it apart? A certain cultural unity, even physiognomic, a sense of community in diversity. Few wonder about the roots of these uniquenesses that are not based on physical isolation, but someone did: starting with Montesquieu who saw the European identity as a product of the climatic exception that blessed Europe from the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago: a mild climate stabilized by the inertia of a huge but closed mass of water.

If Montesquieu was right – and with contemporary criteria, we can confirm that he was right – it means that the climate of Europe has played a decisive role in forging its identity and defining its interests. The same applies to the southern shore of the Mediterranean which, with its own marked identity dynamics, is Africa without actually being Africa. The southern shore of the Mediterranean has also benefited from its favorable climatic exceptionality which has helped to distinguish its identity as specific. These two exceptions have been favorably interconnected by the stabilizing action of the sea that we share, and had created the conditions for the agricultural revolution: the greater social restructuring ever from which emerged the human organization which is still ours. It happened around the Mediterranean – between Europe, Anatolia, Phenicia, because a stable and predictable climate was essential for planning harvests. However, this climate is changing. The blessing of a stabilizing inertia by a vast water basin such as the Mediterranean no longer works if its waters store and release increasing doses of energy into the system, turning its climate into chaos. It is not just a question of winds and rains, and not even a scholarly anthropological one: it is about economics, trade, and geopolitics. And it is dangerous.

The deep foundations of our regional balance are changing, becoming unstable; and a destructive worsening of conflict is looming if we place ourselves in the growing competition in the face of new scarcities and uncertainties. But if we look at all this with the eyes of that science that struggles so hard to be heard, with objectivity, we discover that the changing climate forces us to react together and put together all we have; and can therefore be transformed into an unprecedented opportunity for peace.

Grammenos Mastrojeni
Union for the Mediterranean Deputy Secretary General

Share this:

Latest news

UfM Ministers launch a new Research and Innovation Agenda for the Mediterranean region
27 / 06 / 2022
UfM Secretary General participates in the Tunisia Investment Forum and ANIMA Investment Network Annual Conference
26 / 06 / 2022
See more

Agenda

Joint Webinar on Environment and Health in Seaport Cities,
04 / 07 / 2022
5th meeting of the UfM Permanent Working Group on Evaluation, Monitoring and Reporting Systems on Sustainable Urban Development,
04 / 07 / 2022
See more

Who we are

  • Member States
  • Meet the team
  • Partners
  • History

What we do

  • Economic Development & Employment
  • Higher Education & Research
  • Social & Civil Affairs
  • Water, Environment and Blue Economy
  • Transport & Urban Development
  • Energy & Climate Action

How we work

  • Political Framework
  • Regional Dialogue Platforms
  • Projects and Initiatives

Work with us

  • Vacancies
  • Secondments
  • Internships
  • Procurement
  • Roster of experts

Info centre

  • Media corner
  • News
  • Agenda
  • Publications and key documents
  • Human Stories of the Mediterranean
  • Photo gallery
  • Video gallery
Co-financé par l'Union européenne  -  Cookie Privacy  |  Privacy Privacy  |  Legal notice
  • Who we are
    • Member States
    • Meet the team
    • Partners
    • History
  • What we do
    • Economic Development and Employment
    • Higher Education & Research
    • Social & Civil Affairs
    • Water, Environment and Blue Economy
    • Transport & Urban Development
    • Energy & Climate Action
  • How we work
    • Political Framework
    • Regional Dialogue Platforms
    • Projects and Initiatives
  • Work with us
    • Vacancies
    • Secondments
    • Internships
    • Procurement
    • Roster of experts
  • Info centre
    • Media center
    • News
    • Agenda
    • Publications and key documents
  • Contact
  • Social media
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Youtube
    • Linkedin
    • Flickr
  • English
  • Français
  • العربية
  • English
  • Français
  • العربية
Union for the Mediterranean – UfM
/* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: Loop item in Megamenu – Latest Ufm in the news - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: Loop item in Megamenu – Latest Ufm in the news - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: Content template for Posts - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: Content template for Posts - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: Loop item in NewsRoom – Related News (Sidebar) - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: Loop item in NewsRoom – Related News (Sidebar) - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */

 

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.


3rd Party Cookies

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Cookies Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Read more

3rd Party Cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!