ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the articulation of epicoms with regional environmental politics. It suggests that studies of these two trends have too often evolved in isolation. The chapter provides an assessment of Mediterranean cooperation, 40 years after its launch, and 30 years after P. M. Haas’s Saving the Mediterranean. Saving the Mediterranean and the epistemic community concept remain highly relevant and widely used at regional and global levels. However, use of the epicom concept has since extended to other scales, from local to global, as well as to a host of non-environmental issue areas. Environmental governance has been a priority area of EU foreign policy in global and regional forums generally and in Euro-Mediterranean relations since the 1990s. “New” regions host new agreements, previously identified regions add more agreements and initiatives to their current set, and many high-profile “global” agreements have developed substantial regionalization.
