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with a sunny and mild climate, a huge, virtually-enclosed sea,
spectacular mountain landscapes, and a narrow strip of densely-populated
coastal communities. The Mediterranean harbours one of the Earth's only
Mediterranean shrublands, a major habitat type found in only five
ecoregions around the world, all of limited area. Collectively, though,
these shrublands contain 20 percent of the world's plant species, most
of which are endemic to their particular ecoregion.
The human footprint has been evident around the Mediterranean for almost
longer, and more prominently, than anywhere on Earth. Upon its
countless islands, along its river deltas and through its encircling,
varied coast, the Mediterranean has witnessed the rise and fall of human
civilisations as ancient and important as the Phoenician, Egyptian,
Minoan, Greek and Roman. The accumulated environmental impacts of
millennia of human occupation has been exponentially aggravated in the
past two centuries by increasing industrialisation and development. Many of the
Mediterranean's unique natural features are in immediate and constant
risk, threatening species and undermining the quality of human life.
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