Balancing Geopolitics with Green Deal Recovery
– The Mediterranean is involved in the double transition –geopolitical and energy sources– that characterizes the global energy landscape.
– The Paris Agreement provides the global framework for a decarbonized energy future, even though the implementation rulebook (especially as regards transparency and market mechanism) is yet to be finalized and scientists and civil society consider that the level of ambition is insufficient to achieve its goals.
– The fight against climate change also determines the regional context, since the Mediterranean is one of the regions where its impacts are expected to be more severe, with increases in temperatures well above the global 2ºC target, longer heat waves (potentially exceeding 100 days a year), a greater decrease in rainfall and an advance in desertification, along with more floods and other extreme weather events.
– It is no longer about economic impacts: the greatest impact of climate change in the region will be on the health of its citizens, including the emergence of tropical diseases. Entire areas of the Mediterranean, especially on the southern shore, could become uninhabitable between the middle and the end of the century, especially under high emission scenarios.
– Addressing this challenge means moving towards carbon-neutrality, which the EU is committed to achieve by 2050 through increasingly ambitious measures and objectives.
