MEDITERRANEAN REGION TO BE HIT BY CLIMATE CHANGE

Urgent action needed at upcoming Kyoto Climate Conference to cut CO2 emissions

Amsterdam, 13 November 1997

Climate change will critically undermine efforts for sustainable development in the Mediterranean region and add to existing problems of desertification, water scarcity and food production, according to a Greenpeace report published today.

The report, "Climate Change and the Mediterranean Region", said that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will also introduce new threats to human health, ecosystems and national economies in the basin. The most serious impacts will be felt in North African and eastern Mediterranean countries. The economic and human costs of an increase in desertification would be tremendous - even today, the annual costs of desertification in Tunisia and Spain are US $100 million and US $200 million, respectively.

"Time is running out while industrial nations like the US are refusing to radically cut CO2 emissions and risking an international fiasco at the Climate conference in Kyoto next month," said Lyn Goldsworthy, head of the Greenpeace International climate campaign. "A failure to agree on legally binding CO2 reductions in Kyoto will seriously endanger the future of the peoples in the Mediterranean region," Goldsworthy said.

Without any reductions of CO 2 emissions, temperatures are projected to rise by up to 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 over many inland areas and by over half of this over the Mediterranean Sea. Over the same period, annual rainfall is projected to decline by 10 to 40% over much of Africa and south-eastern Spain, with smaller - but potentially significant - changes elsewhere.

As the world warms, global sea levels will rise as oceans expand and glaciers melt. Around much of the Mediterranean, sea levels could rise by close to 1 metre by 2100. As a consequence, some low-lying coastal areas would be lost through flooding or erosion, while rivers and coastal aquifers would become more salty, the report said. The worst affected areas will be the Nile Delta in Egypt, Venice in Italy and Thessaloniki in Greece where sea levels could rise by at least one-and-a-half times as much as elsewhere.

Reductions in water availability would hit southern Mediterranean countries the hardest. In Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Malta and the Lebanon, water availability already falls below, or approaches 1,000m3 per person per year - the common benchmark for water scarcity. Even relatively well-endowed countries, such as Spain, Greece and Italy, could suffer ever-more frequent regional water shortages due to the twin problems of climate change and rising demand. Crete, for example, could experience serious water shortages in five out of six years by 2010.

Not only might Mediterranean countries loose in economic terms, but the combination of higher prices and crop losses would lead to a deterioration in levels of food security in developing nations concludes Jaqueline Karas, author of the report. Reductions in food security would increase the risks of malnutrition and hunger for millions in the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

Greenpeace calls on all Mediterranean states to demand that the industrialised countries adopt legally binding obligations to reduce their CO2 emissions by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2005 at the Kyoto conference in Japan next month.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Lyn Goldsworthy, Greenpeace International tel: +31 20 5236 241,

Holger Roenitz, GPI press desk tel: +31 20 5249 545

Jaqueline Karas tel: +44 171 609 4676.