Rewiring the Mediterranean: Regional Climate Cooperation in an Age of Fragmentation

The Mediterranean is emerging as a particularly important region for understanding the future of international cooperation as climate diplomacy enters an era focused on implementation.

Positioned at the intersection of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the region concentrates many of the forces shaping the global transition: climate vulnerability, energy transformation, industrial competition, geopolitical fragmentation, and growing demands for resilience and development. The Mediterranean is a region where the promise of climate cooperation faces some of its greatest challenges, but also where some of its most consequential opportunities are taking shape, and where success would carry implications for climate cooperation far beyond the region itself.

Drawing on discussions from the Mediterranean Alliance of Think Tanks on Climate Change, this paper argues that the central question is no longer whether countries will remain interconnected, but what form that interdependence will take. As the shift toward clean energy reorganizes energy systems, infrastructure, trade, and industrial development, new forms of cooperation and dependency are emerging across regions and borders.

Rewiring the Mediterranean: Regional Climate Cooperation in an Age of Fragmentation explores how electrification and system integration, industrial transformation, resilience, and climate finance are reshaping the Mediterranean landscape and what these developments may reveal about the future of climate cooperation. In doing so, the paper considers what a Mediterranean implementation agenda could contribute to COP31, COP32, and the next phase of global climate governance.

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