Mediterranean Agriculture, Ecology, and Law: Creating a New Non-state Actor to Counteract Agro-ecological Collapse in the Mediterranean Basin

abstract:The Mediterranean Basin faces severe ecological degradation: inappropriate agricultural and fishing practices have placed much of the area at risk of ecosystemic collapse. Climate change will intensify the crisis. To address this situation, the Mediterranean Basin should be the subject of a new supranational legal and institutional structure ensuring ecological restoration and agricultural reform, with sovereignty over "environmental" matters (broadly defined) resting not in each of the region's twenty-plus nation-states but rather in a novel supranational institution with legal personality and binding authority over existing national and subsidiary governmental agencies. This article summarizes the rationale, aims, structure, legitimacy, and operations of such a new non-state actor.