UN: Mediterranean region suffers dramatically from climate change and mass tourism

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People on the beach in Barcelona: Habitat loss, increasing water consumption and garbage

Photo: Paco Freire / dpa

Alarm in the holiday paradise of the Mediterranean: According to a UN report, the region is suffering dramatically from the consequences of climate change, pollution and mass tourism.

Tourism on the coast leads to "considerable environmental damage", according to a report published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) on Wednesday.

In addition, the Mediterranean is more affected by climate change than the global average.

For the first time in ten years, experts within the framework of the United Nations Environment Program and the Plan Bleu initiative have assessed the state of the environment and development in the Mediterranean Sea and neighboring countries;

150 experts worked on the report, according to Unep.

According to this, the Mediterranean region is warming 20 percent faster than the global average.

Heat waves are becoming more frequent and stronger, explained the climate expert Wolfgang Cramer from the IMBE Institute in Aix-en-Provence, who contributed to the report.

The rise in temperature has already led to "mass deaths of organisms" in the ocean.

Due to the increasing CO2 content in the air, the water is becoming more and more acidic - with devastating effects on many marine life.

"No more Venice in a few hundred years"

The rise in sea level in particular could prove to be dramatic for the region: Because there are hardly any tides in the Mediterranean, construction has always been very close to the water.

"If we don't stop the rise in sea levels today, we are guaranteed to have no more Venice in 300 to 400 years".

The problems would be compounded by the steady influx of tourists to the Mediterranean.

According to the report, their number has doubled in the neighboring countries over the past 20 years - they make up around 30 percent of all tourists worldwide.

The Mediterranean is also the second most popular region for cruises after the Caribbean.

The world's most used shipping routes also crossed the sea.

"Tourism in this form is not sustainable," said Cramer.

Problems with garbage and hotel blocks

According to the UN report, the Mediterranean is one of the most rubbish-affected regions in the world.

Around 730 tons of plastic waste end up in the water every day.

Overfishing is also a major problem: According to the information, almost four fifths of the fish in the Mediterranean and Black Sea are now being caught in unsustainable quantities.

According to UN experts, these negative factors threaten biodiversity quite considerably: the Mediterranean Sea is home to more than 17,000 species, which make up up to 18 percent of the world's marine organisms, the report said.

A third of Europe's endangered marine habitats are located in the Mediterranean.

There is no improvement in sight and the Mediterranean coast is being built over more and more, as the report warns.

Between 1975 and 2015, three quarters of the neighboring countries doubled or more than doubled the built-up areas that are located within one kilometer of the coast.

This leaves less and less space for coastal ecosystems.

"We know that mass tourism is very harmful to biodiversity, but it is an extremely important economic activity in the Mediterranean," said François Guerquin, director of Plan Bleu.

Making tourism sustainable is not easy.

At the same time, if no decisive action is taken, "environmental degradation will have serious and lasting consequences for life and livelihoods in the region," said Gaetano Leone, head of the UN's Mediterranean Action Plan.

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jme / dpa