Of Oil and Water serves as both a literal and metaphorical lens for the Mediterranean region’s complexities, capturing its economic ambitions alongside its environmental fragility. This section focuses on water as a vital yet increasingly vulnerable resource, essential to nature, culture, and everyday life. It sustains fisheries, agriculture, tourism, and coastal communities, but is under growing pressure from climate change, overfishing, pollution, and scarcity. Oil, in contrast, represents global commerce and geopolitical power, shaping trade routes that connect the Mediterranean to the Middle East and beyond, with a significant share of global seaborne oil passing through the region. While it drives economic growth, it also poses ecological risks through spills, leaks, and long-term environmental degradation.
The works in this section highlight the tension between these two forces. Oil and water rarely harmonise: one sustains life and ecological balance, while the other embodies global trade, extraction, and pollution. Their coexistence underscores the Mediterranean, and the seas in general, as spaces of resource and vulnerability, highlighting the urgent need for environmental stewardship. This chapter brings together works addressing ecology, infrastructure, maritime routes, tourism, fishing, water scarcity, and energy politics, underscoring the environmental and geopolitical forces shaping the region today.
