ZAGREB, March 5, 2020 – Climate change is a growing threat in the 21st century and a challenge for humanity, the Environment Protection and Energy Ministry’s State Secretary Mile Horvat said in the Croatian parliament on Thursday while presenting the Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change for the period until 2040 with a view to 2070.
Croatia is one of the three EU countries that have not adopted such a document yet, Horvat told the MPs.
All the lawmakers welcome such a strategy – the ruling party called it visionary, while the opposition questioned its feasibility, saying that key problems, such as waste management, have not been solved by the ministry.
Horvat said that there was a growing amount of evidence showing that Croatia was being affected by the climate change and that large sums of money were already being allocated for repairing the damage. He also said that eight key sectors most exposed to climate change had been identified and that agriculture was, according to some forecasts, the sector that would suffer the most damage.
Due to climate change, the yield of current crops in Croatia is expected to decline by three to eight percent by 2050, Horvat said.
The State Secretary also gave an estimate of the cost of implementing the strategy.
The annual cost is estimated at HRK 1.3 billion, or €183 million, which may seem a large amount, but only until compared to the annual economic damage caused by extreme climate events. It has so far amounted to €295 million a year, which is almost twice the cost of implementing the measures under the proposed strategy, Horvat said.
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