19 March 2025, Barcelona. On the occasion of World Water Day, celebrated each 22 March, the Union for the Mediterranean sounds the alarm about the region’s rapidly melting glaciers, many of which are on course to cease to exist completely within the coming decades. Glaciers in the Alps and the Pyrenees, the worst affected in Europe, have shrunk 40% in the past quarter century alone. As a member of the UN Mountain Partnership, the UfM stresses that in the Mediterranean region and elsewhere, the swift disappearance of glaciers is linked to flooding, droughts, landslides and sea level rise.
This is particularly concerning as in the Mediterranean, a climate change hotspot warming 20% faster than the global average, the Paris Agreement’s agreed upon 1.5ºC temperature rise is already being exceeded. As the UfM-supported MedECC network of Euro-Mediterranean climate scientists highlights, seemingly small amounts of sea level rise can expose increasingly large numbers of people to flooding and displacement over time. Currently averaging an annual increase of 2.8mm, twice as high as in the 20th century, sea levels are set to rise by up to a metre by 2100, permanently displacing up to 20 million people. And with a third of the population living in close vicinity to the sea, more and more people are becoming exposed to the coastal hazards resulting from climate change and environmental degradation.
Algeria
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