Mediterranean Basin: a melting pot of populations in front of environmental problems

Abstract

Environmental problems are becoming increasingly important around the world and the Mediterranean basin is no exception. In this contribution we focus our attention on some environmental aspects such as the ecological footprint. We intend to analyse the association between demographic trend and environmental growth by a gender perspective, focussing on fertility tendency and EF in the Mediterranean countries, comparing Southern and Northern shores. Correlation between demographic and ecological variables is analysed through factor analysis. The factors may be interpreted looking at the correlation with the original variables. Factor 1 may be interpreted as “modernization” and “sensitivity to the environment”: Factor 2, that explains a much lower level of variance, shows a negative value of correlation with Gender Global Gab and a positive value with TFR, and this may be explained with “delay of modernization and empowerment of women”, that is a characteristic of poor countries.