Why addressing ecological challenges?

The Mediterranean is a unique eco-region. Its temperate climate, which has been domesticating the African heat and the Atlantic cold for millennia, and has produced extraordinary biodiversity, is in great danger today. Global warming is expected to severely hit the region. Unsustainable fishing, urbanisation and forest fires are threatening the richness of its biological heritage. Intensive farming and mass tourism are about to radically impoverish the beauty of our wild and rural sceneries. Pollution is severely affecting public health and ecosystem degradation is exposing people to the dangers of pandemics. Preserving the Mediterranean eco-region is not only a matter of preventing species’ extinction, nor only about defending our most celebrated healthy and diversified diet, or simply preventing the destruction of landscapes which have been created by Human Beings and Nature over the centuries. It is also about struggling against an advanced process of commodification of goods which belong to all humankind, the planet and future generations: water, soil, seeds and species, and air.

Med Dialogue Leaders Programme gathered young leaders in this Bootcamp to:

• Be familiarized with the main environmental challenges in the Mediterranean region, principles of ecological sciences, political ecology and eco-management, by means of interactive presentations and discussions with the facilitators, and working groups,
• Be coached on elaborating and implementing a regional common action within a commonly agreed framework and a central operational coordination; building the concept, identifying common characteristics, planning and operational aspects, etc.
• Participate in study-visits to local environmental CSOs and projects working on ecological transition,
• Participate in a public debate on “Endangered Mediterranean: which policies to address the region’s environmental and climate challenges?”.

The Bootcamp resulted in coaching, funding and implementing 31 common action initiatives across the region under the slogan “10 Days for the Mediterranean”, where 31 participants conducted local awareness-raising campaigns, training and advocacy actions within a common framework, to help promote sustainable practices and environmental protection measures around the following four themes: Climate change, Agroecology and forests, Plastic waste, and Marine pollution. This campaign took place during the month of June 2020, World Environment Day. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, many of the activities were carried out virtually. However, some of them, took place in presence after the set timeframe.