The blue plan for the Mediterranean

UNESCO Courier, August-Sept, 1991 by Michel Batisse

FOR US human beings the ocean is an alien environment where there are no familiar features to help us get our bearings, a place of which we still know little. Sometimes we overest mate its wealth, sometimes we neglect its importance. We behave as if the oceans can absorb anything, and do not suspect that they play a crucial role in the regulation of climate. We think that there are unlimited stocks of fish, whereas in reality world fishing has already reached saturation point. Where the sea is concerned, we seem to find it hard to distinguish myth from reality. . . .

These contradictions between what we believe and what is true, between what we want and what is possible, are nowhere more apparent than in the Mediterranean, that "sea in the midst of land", the cradle and crossroads of ancient civilizations, which is today pointed to as an example of pollution and degradation. What are the facts, and what does the future hold for these shores "where the orange tree blossoms"?

Since 1976, political and economic differences notwithstanding, all the Mediterranean countries have been co-operating within the framework of the Barcelona Convention to protect their common sea from pollution. The Mediterranean is a closed sea, without big tides, and accidents like those involving the Amoco Cadiz off Brittany in 1978 or the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 could have disastrous consequences for the historic cities on its shores, for its beaches, for its tourist and port facilities, and for the fragile economy of its coastal regions. A small oil slick which recently appeared off Genoa caused consternation on the Italian and French rivieras.

Naturally enough, co-operation between the Mediterranean countries focused initially on risks of oil spills and the discharge of toxic wastes and other pollutants. However it soon became clear that the harm being done to the sea originated mainly from the land-from the coast, from rivers, and from the atmosphere. Contrary to what is often said, the main sources of offshore pollution in the Mediterranean are plastic bags, lumps of tar and occasional algae blooms produced by nutrient-rich agricultural fertilizer. On the coast, however, the situation varies widely. On the one hand there are sparsely populated areas which are still very clean; on the other there are zones where considerable chemical and bacteriological pollution is caused by urban, industrial and agricultural wastes. It is on the coastal regions of the Mediterranean countries that human activities are focused and where all kinds of pressures are created.

The Mediterranean basin, whether considered in its totality or in terms of individual countries, provinces and sites, behaves as a "system" whose components act and react together. Any attempt to understand the present and possible future situation of the Mediterranean has to be based on an analysis of the system and its possible futures. Any action which affects only one or another of the components of the system and ignores the overt or covert links between them runs the risk of failure. It may, for instance, be futile to try to attract more tourists to a stretch of coast where the necessary water resources are not available, or if a polluting industry is created nearby.

The Mediterranean countries decided to produce a system-based and future-oriented study which would help them to understand the nature and extent of current developments and to make sound policy decisions. This tool is the Blue Plan. in it population is regarded as the primary component in the Mediterranean system, for it is people who, by their number, age, needs, aspirations and movements, are the dominant factor of change since they act directly, both quantitatively and qualitatively, on all the other components of the system-agriculture, industry, energy, tourism, transport, soils, forests, continental waters, the coastal areas and the sea itself.

Scenarios for the future

In the Blue Plan, a number of scenarios have been constructed for the Mediterranean system until the year 2025. They are based on coherent sets of hypotheses relating to demographic change, to types of development and the growth rates that result from them, to environmental policies, and to levels of cooperation between the northern and southern Mediterranean countries.

Of course these scenarios do not claim to predict the future, which will doubtless emerge from the course of history as erratically as it always has. But they aim to show what may happen in the logic of things, depending on whether or not certain conditions exist. Two types of scenario have been constructed: so-called "trend" scenarios which, to a greater or lesser degree, prolong observable current developments in different parts of the system; and alternative" scenarios which depart considerably from current developments, pay more attention to the environment, and are based on far more effective economic and technical co-operation between the countries of the northern shores of the Mediterranean and those of the south and east. The latter countries are and will be in a far more difficult position than those of the north. The population of their Mediterranean coastal regions may rise from 60 million today to somewhere between 100 and 130 million in the year 2025, whereas population in the northern countries may only rise from 80 to 90 million at most. Population growth alone would create a parallel growth in needs, with major socio-economic and environmental consequences.