Eastern Mediterranean Energy Geopolitics Revisited: Green Economy Instead of Conflict

Abstract

ABSTRACT Dramatic technological advances in renewable sources of energy and environmental concerns have set in motion a global energy transformation that is expected to have profound geopolitical consequences. For example, the Eastern Mediterranean has been recently affected very hard by the fallouts of the ongoing climate crisis. While frictions among the countries of Eastern Mediterranean about maritime zones and continental shelf delimitation related to sovereign claims and to some degree with ambitions of finding oil and gas have abounded in recent years, the impact of a climate crisis on the same countries has been in recent years extreme. The Mediterranean’s more than half-a-billion inhabitants seem to face highly interconnected climate risks. Reasons for concern include sea-level rise-related risks, land and marine biodiversity losses, risks related to drought, wildfire, alterations of water cycle, endangered food production, health risks in both urban and rural settlements from heat and altered disease vectors. Historically, all these have led to mass migration to the cities, crossing borders to other countries, civil wars, ethnic conflicts and tensions. Against this background, energy transition and fight against common existential threats such as climate change or climate crisis are emerging as more daunting challenges as geopolitical competition to secure control of fossil fuels or to assert sovereign claims in the Mediterranean Sea.