CLIMATE CHANGE AT THE CENTER OF BLUE LAND DAY 2022

BLUE LAND DAY 2022

Climate change on the Mediterranean coastal ecosystem: impacts and prospects

CIHEAM Bari – TRICASE PORT (LE)

17 SEPTEMBER 2022, 6.00 pm

Seas and oceans play a decisive role in relation to the climate: just think that they produce almost 50% of the oxygen, absorb about 30% of the CO2 produced by man, supply proteins to 2 billion people and transport more than 90% of our goods. However, climate change threatens and strongly modifies the balance of these ecosystems, their biodiversity, the economies and social structures associated with them and, more generally, the well-being of humanity.

This phenomenon, of global significance, has even more evident effects in our Mediterranean Sea, also due to its characteristic of a semi-closed basin and the very high density of coastal settlements, jeopardizing the integrity of the ecosystems and services. The global climate crisis is causing rapid warming in the Mediterranean basin with average surface temperatures increasing by more than 1.3°C over the past forty years. Biodiversity, on the contrary, is declining; seas and oceans are acidifying due to the greater availability of CO2 in the atmosphere and are suffocating due to the continuous supply of plastic materials.

The IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the most recent summary report published in Copenhagen on 2 November 2021, predicted a global temperature rise of 4°C compared to pre-industrial age levels. Catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet are evidently foreseeable if the governments and economies of the whole planet continue to adopt the current development model, not preferring forms of renewable energy over fossil ones, the circularity of production processes over linear.

But is a different future possible?

To discuss it together, the Blue Land Day returns to Tricase Porto, an appointment dedicated to the themes of conservation of marine ecosystems thanks to sustainable and resilient coastal communities.

This year the focus will be on the climate crisis and we will discuss it with the expert Riccardo Valentini, scientist and professor of forest ecology at the University of Tuscia and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007, as a member of the IPCC – the main international body for the assessment of climate change.

The event will be held on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the foundation of CIHEAM Bari, an international body that has always been a builder of peace and dialogue between peoples and is organized by the Tricase branch of CIHEAM Bari in collaboration with the City of Tricase and the Port Museum of Tricase.

Blue Land Day is a moment of meeting and sharing possible visions and results achieved, of routes traced and to be traced, of ports touched by women and men who, by cooperating and collaborating, invest in nature, culture and landscape, to live responsibly the present and help secure the future.

It is an appointment dedicated to the environment, knowledge, creativity, sociality and well-being, in a small “sea port”, stretching out into the Mediterranean and open to the world.

Blue Land Day 2022 is organized as part of the COMMON project (Coastal Management and Monitoring Network for tackling marine litter in the Mediterranean sea), a European project funded under the ENICBC Med Programme, which connects national and local institutions, research and associations from 5 pilot areas between Italy, Tunisia and Lebanon to develop common solutions to counter the effects of marine pollution from waste.