Special Report on Climate and Environmental Coastal Risks in the Mediterranean – Summary for policymakers

The Mediterranean coastal zone is a hotspot for highly interconnected climate risks for the ecosystems and the societies due to a particular combination of multiple severe climate hazards, including rising temperatures, water scarcity, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events. Policies to manage coastal risks and adaptation strategies in the Mediterranean coastal zone are important to the whole region, as a third of the Mediterranean population lives close to the sea and depends on infrastructure and economic activities in its immediate vicinity. Thus, region-specific scientific knowledge is essential for stakeholders, governments, and citizens to make informed climate and environmental decisions and policies.

The Special Report Climate and Environmental Coastal Risks in the Mediterranean provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific, technical and socio-economic literature on environmental and climate change hazards in the Mediterranean Basin’s coastal zones. It builds upon the MedECC MAR1 Assessment Report, previous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other relevant regional, national, and local assessments, and is drawing on evidence from over 1000 scientific publications. The Special Report has been prepared by a team of leading experts and scientists in the various fields of research, who have volunteered to contribute their expertise, rigour and time without any economic compensation.

The Special Report includes the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) – available now – is composed of headline statements and a high-level summary and narrative of the key messages from the longer report (soon available). The final stakeholder review of the SPM was concluded through the online plenary consultation on November 6, 2023. The particular aim of the consultation was to ascertain that the findings of the Special Report as presented in the SPM, are fully comprehensible and unambiguous and, overall, that the Plenary consultation did not identify any factual inaccuracy or error in the SPM. The revised SPM has been endorsed by the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention (COP23, 4-8 December 2023, Portoroz, Slovenia).

November 2024