Plan Bleu has been entrusted by the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention and by its previous activities, to carry out a new prospective exercise on the environment and development in the Mediterranean on the Horizon 2050. This exercise follows on from the foresight reports « The Plan Bleu : the future of the Mediterranean basin » of 1989 and « Mediterranean – Plan Bleu perspectives on environment and development » of 2005. Since then, the Mediterranean context has evolved considerably since the last Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) foresight exercise in 2005.
The MED 2050 project is part of a vision of a prosperous and peaceful Mediterranean region, where people enjoy a high quality of life and where development takes into account the carrying capacity limits of healthy ecosystems. Following preparatory activities, MED 2050 is part of a short, medium and long term dynamic to achieve a sustainable future :
- Horizon intermédiaire 2030 correspondant aux objectifs aux 17 Objectifs de Développement Durable (ODD) de l’Agenda 2030.
- Horizon 2050 corresponding to long-term issues such as climate change, possible ruptures in ecosystems and their economic and social consequences (consequences on agriculture, fishing, lifestyles, migration, urbanization, energy policies, etc.), and to identify the necessary transitions.
The MED 2050 roadmap is organized around four main activity modules, each with its own specific utility and methodology :
- Module 1 : building the prospective base – past and future trends, weak signals and ruptures, data sheets
- Module 2 : compare and share contrasting visions for the Mediterranean by 2050 – with a focus on youth visions
- Module 3 : Designing scenarios – exploring possible futures to inform resilience policy development
- Module 4 : co-constructing transition paths – guiding decision making towards alternative narratives of the future
The Module 1 report gives an account of the methodology and construction work of the foresight base of MED 2050. This first module constitutes a solid basis for the analysis of the Mediterranean system: it explores in a preliminary manner the tendencies, breaks, and weak signals specific to it and prioritizes the challenges, risks or opportunities for the environment and sustainable development in horizons 2030 – 2050. Associating twenty-three experts on a permanent basis in the foresight group, ninety-three experts in support of the latter, as well as the twenty-eight members of the Orientation Committee, module 1 is not only the guarantor of the credibility scientific basis of the project, but also the basis on which all the other stages are based.
Beyond this report, to find out more about MED 2050: the main productions and news of MED 2050 can be consulted on the dedicated web platform : www.med2050.org.
