Another Look at the Future for Water in the Mediterranean Region

The “Plan Bleu”, which was launched following an intergovernmental meeting in Split in 1977, is an independent agency that has been studying the Mediterranean region for almost 30 years, in particular thanks to the research centre at Sophia-Antipolis in southern France. In line with its brief, in 1986/7 the Blue Plan examined possible futures for the region by building scenarios based on the interaction of classic assumptions about economic and demographic growth (trend scenarios) with assumptions about different policies of North/South and South/South co-operation, also taking account of environmental and development considerations (alternative scenarios). Possible or desirable visions of the future for the Mediterranean basin were derived for the medium (2000) and long term (2025), especially with regard to water resources.
Since then, the Blue Plan has regularly tried to update this exercise. In this article Jean Margat, its vice-president, summarizes the main conclusions of the most recent effort to foresee the situation for water in the Mediterranean region in 2010 and 2025. As he stresses, there is still much uncertainty about the future of water resources in the area (especially as a result of changes in the climate and in the lifestyles of people living there, as well as of the environmental policies that are to be implemented), but it is virtually certain that the resources will continue to decline and the gap between North and South will continue to widen.