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Climate Change and its Impacts on Society and Economy in Croatia.
Climate Change and its Impacts on Society and Economy in Croatia
Basically, Croatian economy has many sectors that can be affected by climate change and these sectors accounts for an equivalent of almost 25% of the economy probably, EUR 10 billion per year.
About Croatian Climate:
As the temperature are already increasing, participation appears to be decreasing and that appears to have more extreme weather events, such as heat waves. So, it’s expected that in future Croatians might experience really hot and dry weather especially in summers. Climate models has suggested that if emission continues to increase e, the period between 2040-2070 will be between 3 and 3.5° warmer throughout Croatia during the summer. By the end of the century, the increase in temperature and decrease in precipitation would be even more severe. Because of the climate’s condition tourism is the most important issue to be considered. In which, models predict that climate change will create uncomfortably hot summers along the Adriatic coast which may cause many beach tourists to avoid these destinations. As, they would prefer to visit Northern Europe as it will become more attractive by their climates comparatively.
One more phenomenon that was mentioned is the rise in sea-level. Which is expected to rise between 9 and 88 cm by 2100 – though large-scale melting of ice in the Antarctic or in Greenland could mean that sea level would rise much higher. According to the approximation of this Report, the total amount of land submerged with sea-level rise of 50 cm would be over 100 million square metres. With a sea-level rise of 88 cm, over 112 million square metres would be submerged. Although, there is a lot of uncertainty that it will occur and that it will happen slow and gradually so there are slight chances to get over with this issue as soon as possible and also working for infrastructure and long-term investments should be considered.
Furthermore, if we talk about the Water resources. Hydro-electric power production makes up half of electricity production in Croatia. Decreased river flow would lead to a reduction of hydro-electric power production resulting in significant extra costs (tens of millions of Euros) to replace the generating capacity if river flow is reduced and natural resources such as Food protection, water filtration could also be at a risk in dry weather in future.
Data sources and Availability on Agriculture:
Croatia conducted its first independent agricultural census in 1960. However, surveys on the structure of agriculture during the 1970s–90s were based on a different methodology to the farm structure survey. As a prospective member of the EU, Croatia carried out a farm structure survey in 2007 and 2010; the responsible body for this work was the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.
In 2010, all farms of at least 0.4 hectares of agricultural area or 0.1 hectares of vineyards or orchards were surveyed for the farm structure survey in Croatia. Furthermore, farms falling below these thresholds but producing vegetables, herbs, strawberries, mushrooms, flowers or ornamental plants for selling purposes were also included in the target population, as well as holdings with at least 0.5 livestock units. This coverage of small farms means that the results from 2007 to 2010 are not strictly comparable because of the change in coverage. The FSS covered 98 % of the utilised agricultural area and 98 % of the livestock in Croatia in 2010.
Extreme weather events such as droughts and hail have resulted in average losses of EUR 176 million per year from 2000-2007 - 0.6% of national GDP, or 9.3% of GVA generated by the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector – this is more than the average value of subsidies in this sector during that time period.
In the future, crop models predict that maize production will likely be affected by climate change – resulting in losses of between EUR 6-16 million in 2050 and EUR 31-43 million in 2100 and it seems like other crops might get effected by the lack of water and extreme heat, though there may be are some advantages but still not enough information is available to predict the impacts for all the important crops in the future.
*Solutions regarding Croatia’s climate change!*
▪ Croatia’s trajectory for emissions growth in the Business as Usual (BAU) case is estimated to result in 42 million tons of CO2e in 2020, which represents a 36% increase from 2006 levels of 30.83 million tonnes of CO2e.
▪ The EU has committed to reducing emissions by 20% by 2020 and Croatia has committed under the Kyoto Protocol to reducing emissions by an average of 5% from the agreed upon 1990 levels of 36 million tonnes by 2012. Croatia will also share at least part of the EU commitment for 2020. ▪ there are many “no regrets” mitigation measures that will actually save money and provide an economic benefit to Croatia. Most of these are related to energy efficiency. There are many other measures that will either be cost-neutral or cost a relatively small amount.
▪ In total, it is projected that Croatia should be able to stabilize its emissions at around 30 million tonnes with a slight economic benefit due to energy saved and to avoid dangerous climate change resulting from an increase in temperature of over 2ºC, global GHG emissions must be cut by 50-85% by 2050.
▪ In addition to measures that are not likely to be too expensive, there are other mitigation options which may be good to implement either because of their social popularity (such as solar panels) or additional benefits aside from mitigation. For example, increasing the carbon content in agricultural soils would decrease net emissions and have a positive impact on soil moisture.
▪ According to the estimate in the NHDR, Croatia could theoretically achieve a 30% cut in emissions by 2020, from the baseline of 36 million tons per year. The economic costs of achieving this reduction in 2020 are estimated to be EUR 115-536 million in that year.
Institutional Analysis for Mitigation,
Croatia has made a firm commitment to reducing emissions by introducing a carbon fee, promoting renewable energy, encouraging energy efficiency, and committing to GHG reductions under the Kyoto Protocol. There is a good amount of technological and intellectual capacity in Croatia to reduce emissions. Various businesses, NGOs and expert organizations are already engaged. Better coordination and information sharing would make progress easier. This is especially true among state actors that are not already heavily engaged such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development, the Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, and the Ministry of Tourism. (Humans Development report)
