The Cassandra Conference articulates an action plan to contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change in the Mediterranean and Africa

The International Cassandra Conference, organised by the Eurecat technology centre, has published an action plan aimed at engaging society to identify, design and implement strategies for mitigating the socio-political effects of climate change in the Mediterranean and Africa.

In particular, the conclusions of the first two editions of Cassandra laid the foundations for an international initiative focused on discussing and providing scientific and technological responses to the effects of climate change on health, migration, conflict and gender inequality, as well as a plan of specific actions within the project. It is supported by some 100 organisations, including the European Commission, the OECD, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank and UNESCO.

The action plan proactively promotes the collaboration of local and cultural stakeholders with research institutions, technology centres and universities for the creation of Local Climate Forums in the Mediterranean and African region. Four of these forums will host pilot cases to co-design, co-implement and monitor the evolution of response actions to local challenges linked to climate change and health, migration, gender equality or armed conflicts.

The progress of the actions, coordinated by Eurecat, will be presented in two online forums and the results obtained will be announced at the third edition of Cassandra, in November next year.

In the words of Eurecat’s head of international political relations, Richard Elelman, “Cassandra began 2021 in the face of evidence that climate change will accelerate the emergence of complex socio-political effects that our society cannot ignore”.

Second edition of the International Cassandra Conference

In the second edition, the International Cassandra Conference brought together more than 60 expert voices and opened a dialogue between politicians, researchers, supranational agencies, writers, socio-cultural activists, NGOs and, above all, citizens from Africa and the Mediterranean, with the aim of identifying the political and social consequences of climate change and how to overcome them.

Cassandra highlighted that the lack of good quality drinking water, air pollution, rising temperatures, more frequent flooding and rising sea levels are increasingly the cause of greater displacement of people and higher mortality rates.

Along these lines, it was emphasised that, although Africa produces only 4 percent of the planet’s CO₂ emissions, 300 million people no longer have access to clean water on this continent.

During the Conference, it was also noted that women suffer the greatest consequences of climate change, since they often have to take care of children alone, travel long distances to get water and find ways to overcome the daily obstacles caused by poor environmental conditions.

On the humanitarian side, Open Arms stressed that in the last 10 years more than 30,000 people have lost their lives in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. The NGO also pointed out that, in eight years, they have also rescued more than 70,000 people in the Mediterranean.

Experts indicated that these migratory movements could increase exponentially when the African population is forced to leave the land due to the negative effects of climate change.

Across various sessions, the participants also agreed that the most important form of migration will be that of people with strong ties to traditional rural areas, who will have to adapt to the uncertainties of modern urban areas. It was said that this entails a high risk of being socially excluded from mainstream life in the cities that are growing inexorably, not only in Africa and the Mediterranean, but throughout the world.

The conference heard from people suffering these effects from the slums of Kibera and Korogocho in Kenya and Soweto in South Africa, and from organisations seeking to provide solutions based on both traditional technology and new technological tools to create a socially beneficial impact where it is most needed.