The Mediterranean, a hazard-region. Climate Change, vulnerability, resilience

Abstract

The Mediterranean sea is a main Anthopocene scenary on a planetary scale. The rapid environmental and social changes lived on the shore of this historic sea since the middle of the XX century, transformed the Mediterranean basin in a highly vulnerable geographic area before the effects of the global warming. It is also a hazard-region, a geographic space where natural hazards and a high degree of intense human occupation converge since historic ages, and where activities, infraestructures and urban spaces were developed in many unfitting areas. These facets have raised the exposure to natural hazards transforming the Mediterranean region in a hazard hotspot, that requires societies to adapt policies in order to reduce current and future extreme effects within the context of climate change. This is nothing new for us. In fact, these lands have lived historic times of crisis –climatic, geological, social and economic- and have known how to overcome them. That is what Norwich designates as the ‘miracle’ of the Mediterranean, something that makes it unique in our world: the ability of its societies to coexist in a difficult environment, generating diverse civilizations whose marks are still revealed. Nowadays its main concern is about a complex environmental process -the atmospheric heating- due to the unfavorable effects on its territories and societies, that in fact can go further. Thus, this is the begining of a new era. A new challenge for the Mediterranean.