Contemporary environmental challenges require preventive, interdisciplinary and international responses. In recent decades, Europe has become the global leader in identifying and promoting such responses through pioneering technical, management and policy solutions to environmental problems at the national, EU and global levels. MESPOM is designed to further strengthen this area of European competitiveness. The MESPOM Consortium is strategically positioned for this task due to its partners’ leadership in complementary fields of environmental studies; their extensive experience in delivering environmental Masters courses to international students; and their track record of successful cooperation in education and research. MESPOM will advance a truly European perspective on the environment through combining Nordic, Mediterranean, Western and Central European scholarly traditions and practical approaches.

• The Nordic perspective is represented by the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, a European leader in research and advanced education on preventive environmental strategies. The image of Nordic countries being unchallenged global leaders in "ecological modernization" of public agencies and private corporations is supported by the research and education at the IIIEE, which demonstrates the feasibility of combining economic competitiveness and environmental protection.
• The Mediterranean perspective is represented by the University of the Aegean whose strong interdisciplinary research team works on biodiversity, nature conservation, ecosystems and resource management and valuation, and integrated spatial planning with a focus on tourism. Its expertise on sustainable managment of islands and isolated areas is highly relevant to many countries in the East Mediterranean and worldwide.
• The Western European perspective is represented by the University of Manchester whose School of Environmental, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences and the Faculty of Life Sciences are European and global leaders in environmental issues and biosciences. Manchester provides an ideal setting for environmental research and education, as the cradle of the industrial revolution where many of the contemporary environmental pollution problems were defined and analyzed and where scientific and practical solutions were found.
• The Central European perspective is represented by the Central European University , an international post-graduate university created in 1991 to support the post-communist transformation of Central and Eastern Europe. CEU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy is a European center of research excellence on environmental policy and issues in emerging democracies. Students and scholars from more than 70 countries have been attracted to CEU to learn from the lessons of Central Europe in combining economic, political and environmental reforms.