Let’s talk about the Mediterranean Sea. What are the main environmental challenges that we are facing and how do they affect marine life and coastal communities? The Mediterranean has historically played a key role for human civilization, particularly for western civilization. As some ancient writings say, the Mediterranean Sea was noted for its great amount of natural wealth and the number of species and the volume of what we also call resources was gigantic. However, today this is no longer the case and it is probably one of the greatest examples of destruction, overfishing and collapse of species. I think the role then of the Mediterranean is just that: recovery. That means finding a different direction, to discover and develop a civilization that has a different dialogue and a different relationship with the planet, particularly with the other living beings that inhabit it. The Mediterranean is indeed suffering from the triple crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, the latter being directly related to overexploitation. Pollution is not only plastics but a lot of other pollution such as chemicals and a lot of other issues that we have put on the land and end up in the sea as well. Obviously our carelessness has been our biggest problem and today climate change which is making the ocean warmer is one of the key issues. We only need to look at Ibiza, the prairies and the corals that are suffering from the increase in temperature. 059 There is a lot of talk about the importance of education in this area. Are there any programs or educational initiatives that are innovative? There are several things in terms of environmental education. Everything is useful. But there are also some networks of environmental educators that I think it is important to mention because what they do is to match the capacities of many of these educators. Obviously all education has to be adapted to the places because it is also part of the culture and knowledge of each place. Education is key if we want to change the attitude and our relationship with nature. The solution is to reduce emissions. I don’t believe in NET ZERO. It’s not that I don’t believe in it. It is that it’s proven that what we have to do is to leave oil in the ground and we have to rush all the things we can do as humans to generate different sources of energy and be sustainable. But at the same time we can’t expect to destroy other things through that. It cannot always be the net negative because it has a cost and sacrifice of nature. See the case, for example, of underwater mining. Now we are being told that much more metals are needed for the batteries of the different energy systems and that cannot be through the destruction of the seabed which is probably where life on the planet comes from. We must always look for a balance, everything does not have to be always a sum and subtraction where the planet always ends up subtracting. ONE OF THE BIGGEST CONCERNS TODAY IS CLIMATE CHANGE. WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM?
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