Some regions of the world are even more exposed to climate change than others and can expect an even more worrying future. The Mediterranean basin is this case: it is warming 20% faster than the rest of the world. On the occasion of COP29, in Azerbaijan, Piero Lionello, from the University of Salento, and Mohamed Abdel Monem, climate and rural development consultant, remembered this on Monday, November 18. At the invitation of the Union for the Mediterranean (which brings together the European Union and sixteen Mediterranean countries), they presented two reports for which they coordinated the contributions of fifty-five scientists from seventeen countries, within the MedECC (Euro-Mediterranean Network of Climate Scientists and the Environment) network of experts.
One describes the impacts of climate change in this region of more than 540 million inhabitants, the other analyzes the water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus, that is, the cascading implications that link these sectors. “All the consequences of climate change are clearly visible: warming, reduced availability of fresh water… And our problems are minor compared to those that await us if we continue to emit so many greenhouse gases”Piero Lionello alerts.
Although the images of the Valencia conurbation, in Spain, devastated by apocalyptic rains at the end of October, are in everyone’s memory, experts point out that the population concentration on its coasts is growing faster than in the interior. A third resides in the vicinity of the coasts. It is true that the number of inhabitants could decrease in the North, but a strong increase is expected in the Middle East and the Maghreb countries. Therefore, up to 20 million people could be forced to permanently move between now and 2100, the authors estimate.
In question: the increase in extreme events (droughts and torrential rains), the rise in sea level and, in general, environmental degradation. The drainage of more than 160 coastal waterways, the disappearance of around half of the coastal wetlands during the 20th centurymy century, directly affects the state of coastal areas, because these ecosystems act like sponges and provide sediments.
General deterioration
In the region, the frequency and intensity of 100-year extreme events (which have a one in a hundred chance of occurring each year) could increase by between 10% and 30% by the middle of the 21st century.my century, if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to stay below 1.5°C of warming. Notable sites and infrastructure are threatened. Three large airports are among the twenty most exposed to the risk of coastal flooding in the world: Corfu, in Greece, and Pisa and Venice, in Italy.
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