Mediterranean: Today’s ‘Paradise Lost’

When it gave birth to Western civilization, the Mediterranean was the world. Ecologists today are calling it a “Paradise Lost.”

Ravaged by man over the centuries, the face of the Mediterranean has been scarred--lush forests felled, wildlife silenced, mineral-rich soil long gone, aquamarine currents fouled by oil slicks.

But some of the region’s leading thinkers are trying to rediscover a “Mediterranean identity” through the only common bond they can find: a determination to save what’s left of the Mediterranean’s environment.

It’s a region “whose contribution is acknowledged by the world but whose future lies in doubt,” wrote Serge Antoine, international relations adviser for France’s Environment Ministry.

Antoine, among 60 delegates who discussed the state of the Mediterranean at a recent international conference in Cairo sponsored by the Rome-based Aspen Institute Italia, called on the region’s 18 countries to unite their cultural and political wills to shape a brighter future.

The institute, a branch of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies of Aspen, Colo., brings together political, economic and cultural leaders to discuss current issues.

A clear message emerged from the conference: the only way to solve the area’s environmental, social, economic and political ills is to find common ground uniting the diverse cultures tied by geography to the Mediterranean Sea.

“There’s only one issue that can join us now, and that’s the environment,” Gianni De Michelis, Italy’s deputy prime minister and president of the Italian institute, said in an interview.

“Despite the vast differences between industrialized countries that border the northern Mediterranean and less-developed countries bordering the south, everybody agrees we have to do something about the environment. It’s the only rallying point we have, the one issue public opinion can use to force politicians to act.”

Delegates from Europe, North Africa and the United States said the Mediterranean region has greater potential for environmental progress than most because of its manageable size and the historical links its countries share.

They agreed, however, that despite the work of numerous local and international agencies, governments aren’t doing enough.

A major topic of the conference was the Mediterranean Action Plan, a survey dating from the mid-1970s seeking to balance the area’s environmental and development needs through the first quarter of the 21st Century.

The Mediterranean basin is among the most developed regions in the world despite its varied cultures, but its population and industry are shifting rapidly toward its fragile coastlines. Tourism is increasing greatly throughout the region, and almost half the millions of annual tourists remain along the coast.

The basin has 29,000 miles of seacoast, only 40% of which is flat, usable land.

Additionally, population is growing unevenly, declining slightly along the Mediterranean’s richer northern tier and expanding rapidly in the poorer south.

Experts warned of threats from other sources: ships dumping toxic or hazardous wastes, deforestation on both sides of the Mediterranean and the lack of effort to find alternatives to fossil-based fuels that pollute the atmosphere.