The world, including the Mediterranean region, is faced with a number of challenges, such as inequalities, significant flows of distress migration and limited access to and poor management of natural resources, including water, land and biodiversity. Various forms of waste related to food, natural resources and knowledge are embedded in these challenges and pose significant obstacles for the achievement of
sustainability.
The problem of land is another issue that is frequently raised. The availability of hydroponic techniques is no reason to lose sight of the fact that land resources, like water, are crucial for agriculture. The situation is sufficiently worrying for the United Nations to have declared 2015 the International Year of Soils, following on
from 2014, which was the International Year of Family Farming – an indication of the extent to which land constitutes a major pillar of the development of rural communitites. Nearly 1.3 billion hectares of land, the equivalent of 28% of the world’s entire agricultural surface area, is currently used to produce food that is
subsequently lost or wasted. To this waste of land should be added the whittling away of arable land by advancing urbanization, which is taking place throughout the Mediterranean.
In terms of food, the world produces enough today to feed the planet, but one third, representing 1.3 billion tons per year, is either wasted or lost in the supply chain, from initial agricultural production all the way to final household consumption.
Furthermore, continued increase in the use of natural resources such as water, land, forestry, biodiversity and fisheries, without paying sufficient attention to their depletion or environmental impacts, can lead to ecological crises and security threats. In the Mediterranean region, for example, wasting a precious resource like water may intensify such threats.
Additionally, the waste of human resources hampers development efforts. This happens, for example, in the form of unemployment, lack of access to education especially for girls, “brain drain” from developing countries, disappearance of local knowledge such as family farming practices and products, duplication of ideas without coordination and lack of synergies among relevant actors.