Israel and the Palestinian Authority are among 15 Mediterranean nations who have just signed a historic agreement to work together to combat the effects of climate change, one month ahead of the next United Nations conference on climate change, meeting at Cancun in November.

The Mediterranean Climate Change Initiative was inaugurated by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to develop common Mediterranean positions on climate change and was signed by the prime ministers or top environmental officials of 15 countries who agree that climate change threatens their way of life as peoples of the Mediterranean.

Signatories included a wide assortment of countries: EU members like France, Spain, Italy, and Greece; Eastern European countries like Turkey, Croatia, Romania and Macedonia, and Middle Eastern countries, like Libya, Syria and Egypt. Most remarkable of all, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed on to the initiative.

The declaration called for contributing to the emergence of low carbon, resource efficient and climate resilient economies.

Israel's president had committed the nation to reduce carbon emissions 20% by 2020 at Copenhagen last year. To achieve the reduction in carbon, Israel's state-owned electricity company the IEC (Israel Electric Corporation) which supplies nearly all of the electricity for both states, would need to supply a higher percentage of the total electricity (about 12,000 megawatts) that currently powers the two tiny states — with clean energy.