Atlas of Mediterranean Environments in Europe: The Desertification Context

The Mediterranean countries of Europe have been undergoing rapid change and development over the last thirty years and especially during the last ten. These changes have occurred in all aspects of life and livelihood, and for many countries such change has had far reaching social and economic impacts. In addition, the results of centuries of distinctive man—environment relationships in a climatically marginal region have been swept aside and the landscape itself is undergoing a rapid transformation. Large areas are being abandoned temporarily or permanently by rural populations; urban growth is rampant; agriculture has been intensified; and water scarcity, fed by the severe droughts of the 1980s and 1990s, has become a major environmental and resource concern. At the same time the threat of global climate change and the indication of deeper and more sustained future droughts has brought these issues into sharp focus. Based on the findings of the European Community’s Medalus Project, this Atlas brings to a wide audience the background to and a contemporary understanding of the environmental crisis, which is now facing the Mediterranean region of Europe, as well as the future prospects for a solution.