Current Understanding of Environmental and Water Resource Impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean

While this presentation in its title aims to review the environmental and water resource impacts in the eastern Mediterranean, in the subtitle emphasis is given to the fact that regional issues are inseparably linked with the environment/climate of a greater area.

The mid-latitude water bodies extending from Gibraltar eastwards to the Aral Sea can be identified as a true “medi-terra”nean complex of seas locked between continents increasingly isolated from the world ocean, which together form an interconnected climatic unit. The climates of the “downstream” water bodies, i.e., the Eastern Mediterranean, and Black and Caspian seas, are linked with the climates of the adjoining continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, which in turn are affected by the climates of the adjoining Atlantic and Indian oceans. Ocean-atmosphere-land interactions and consequent feedbacks between regional and global climate systems could be disproportionately large in this region of contrasts between marine and continental climates, and complex land/sea bottom topography (Özsoy 1999). High gradients in physical characteristics, as well as in so- cioeconomics, make the region prone to impacts of climate change, implying possible changes in hydrology and ecosystems.

On the basis of our present understanding, it is not clear how the global climate system is projected onto the region, or how the region contributes to the global system. Unexpectedly large impacts could occur, as they have done in the past, in such a complex system, in response to global change. On the other hand the typically delayed human response to environmental emergencies can result in irreparable damage.