Water, energy and peace: the case for a Mediterranean axis

From Algiers to Madrid, and Cairo to Marseille, the Mediterranean region finds itself adrift in an increasingly fragmented world order testing the resilience of nations on both sides of this sea. Great power rivalries, trade wars, and proxy conflicts are buffeting countries that once relied on global institutions and distant allies to keep the peace and fuel their economies. Instead of stability, they face a future of uncertainty — unless they choose a different path.
The Mediterranean has always been more than just a body of water; it is the cradle of interconnected civilizations. For millennia, its shores boasted trade routes, cultural exchanges, and safeguarded economic interdependence. From the Roman concept of Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea”) to the era of European empires and colonization in North Africa, history has repeatedly woven the fates of southern Europe and North Africa together. In the 20th century, as colonialism gave way to independence, the ties persisted through migration, language, and commerce.
Today, tens of millions of people of North African descent live in France, Spain, and Italy, and southern European companies are deeply invested in North African markets. Yet despite this profound intermingling, political and economic integration across the Mediterranean has lagged behind its historical and human reality. Efforts like the 1995 Barcelona Process and the 2008 Union for the Mediterranean set out grand visions of a Euro-Mediterranean community, but delivered only modest results. As old rivalries and new crises intervened, it has become increasingly clear that the region’s integration remains an unfinished business.
And now, as global fractures widen, the cost of that fragmentation is rising sharply, which carries immediate risks for the countries around the Mediterranean. Each government, acting alone, faces the prospect of being a pawn in larger games — from energy shocks, debt-laden port deals, or being drawn into sprawling proxy “forever wars.” Continuing on the current path of disunity promises more of the same instabilities: sporadic disruptions, external meddling, and deepening distrust between neighbors.
The clearest antidote is for the Mediterranean’s own players to close ranks and build collective strength. If Europe and North Africa can form a cohesive “axis” of cooperation, they create a shield against outside shocks — one forged by turning mutual vulnerabilities into mutual advantages.
Nowhere is the need for cooperation more literally vital than in water.

Water is life, but around the Mediterranean it is increasingly a source of crisis. Climate change has made this region a global hotspot, with the Mediterranean warming and drying about 20 percent faster than the world average. Southern Europe has been scorched by record summer temperatures that desiccated its farmland, while North African cities from Casablanca to Cairo know the fear of reservoirs running low.
The southern Mediterranean is home to 15 of the world’s 20 most water-scarce countries, and some communities are already at levels far below what is defined as water poverty. Moreover, population growth and irrigation needs push usage up, even as rainfall becomes erratic and aquifers are depleted. If current trends persist, experts warn that about 250 million people around the Mediterranean could face water poverty by 2040.

The current global order is a dangerous sea to sail alone.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Such a future spells disaster: failing crops, thirsty cities, and the specter of conflicts over rivers and reservoirs, making water scarcity yet another stress multiplier, fueling social discontent, migration, and potential clashes.
No single country can mitigate this challenge or remain insulated from its spillovers. After all, the nature of water is inherently transboundary: Rivers cross borders, aquifers span continents, and weather does not respect political lines. The only effective answer is cooperation — sharing technology, strategies, and even water itself when possible.
If water is one pillar of a Mediterranean axis, energy is the other great opportunity to unite the region.
On one shore, Europe is hungry for reliable, affordable energy as it accelerates away from fossil fuels; on the other, North African nations possess an abundance of untapped solar, wind, and natural gas resources. In the past, energy often meant oil and gas flowing northward: Algeria’s pipelines have warmed Spanish and Italian homes for decades, and Libya’s oil fueled European cars. However, the 21st century is rapidly redefining energy needs and possibilities, making the real promise of an energy-based Mediterranean axis lie not in yesterday’s hydrocarbons, but in tomorrow’s green power.
This is not pie-in-the-sky theorizing — it is already starting. Morocco and Spain have exchanged electricity through undersea cables for years, and are now studying ways of transporting green hydrogen from North Africa to European markets. Tunisia and Italy, despite being separated by 900 km of sea, are planning a new power interconnector that will allow Tunisian solar farms to feed the European grid. Furthermore, just this year, a coalition of Italy, Germany, and other EU states signed on to the South H2 Corridor, a proposed hydrogen pipeline from Algeria and Tunisia up into Italy and beyond — a steel umbilical cord that could deliver North African sunshine in the form of clean hydrogen gas to European factories thousands of kilometers away.
A driving promise of a Mediterranean axis is right in the title of this piece: peace. Greater economic cooperation in water, energy, and trade is also about creating the conditions for lasting stability. The logic is simple, but powerful: Countries that are interdependent and have institutionalized channels for collaboration are far less likely to drift into conflict. Thus, the Mediterranean region now needs its own version of this peace-through-integration story, because the alternative is already playing out in worrying ways.
Skeptics will point out that building this kind of regional partnership is no easy feat. They are not wrong. Decades of fits and starts in Euro-Mediterranean initiatives, the persistence of political animosities, and disparities in governance and economic models all pose real obstacles. But the argument here is that the cost of not trying has become far greater than the cost of overcoming these obstacles.
The world is not waiting for the Mediterranean to get its act together; others are already courting these countries one by one, or else exploiting the vacuum left by disunity. The current global order is a dangerous sea to sail alone. As a result, a Mediterranean axis anchored on water, energy, and peace is about empowering the region to write its own destiny in a century that will be defined by collaboration or lack thereof.
It is a bet that the nations of the Mediterranean can achieve together what they cannot alone: secure their water future, lead the world in clean energy, protect their people from conflict, and prosper from Marrakech to Marseille as one of the great crossroads of global trade and culture.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell