Globalization is producing deep and often dramatic changes all over the world. The Euro-Mediterranean area is now affected by economic crisis and social distress, with disparities that generate tensions inside and among countries. However, as in other transition periods in the history of mankind, hard challenges come together with new opportunities, accessible by using innovative approaches.
To reverse the present trend, it is thus time for Euro-Mediterranean countries to develop new strategies consistently with the global nature of the challenges. Such strategies should achieve sustainable development, boost opportunities for job creation and increase competitiveness, mitigating disparities and leading to a new role at the world scale. Consolidating existing cooperation mechanisms and generating new initiatives by increasing coordination and concentration of objectives, resources and competences can be driving forces to promote sustainable and socially inclusive development of Mediterranean regions in the frame of the European Cohesion Policy. Dialogue, shared competences and agreed objectives should characterize this approach. In this regard, the Workshop will profit from the international and multicultural nature of research and education, as well as from existing networks.
The Workshop is connected with the Colloquium that has been organized in Marseille on 4- 5 May 2017 by the RMEI Network of Mediterranean Universities and by the École Centrale Marseille, in collaboration with UNESCO IChair 651) lnnovation pour Le Développement Durable, CMU-Community of Mediterranean Universities, UNIMED – Mediterranean Universities Union, GEC École de Management – Marrakech, University of Naples Federico Il, University of Naples L’Orientale, SVIMEZ and Science and School Association.
And seas but join the regions they divide
Alexander Pope in his juvenile poem “Windsor forest” (1713)