A Climate for Change

(^48) Human Development Report - Croatia 2008
knowing the costs and benefits of adaptation, it will
be hard to make intelligent decisions about how gov-
ernments should react to climate change. It will also
be difficult to know how much governments will need
to do to help the private sector adapt, if at all. Finally,
climate change is likely to impact how governments
address existing climate variability – by planning
reservoirs, protecting wetlands, protecting against
floods, droughts and other natural disasters. Govern-
ments will have to plan responses to changes in cli-
mate variability and determine the extent to which
planning and coping with climate change will affect
public spending and taxation. This planning also in-
cludes developing a better response to existing cli-
mate variability, which is already having an impact on
Croatia.
There are various ways to adapt to the existing cli-
mate and future climate change. Autonomous adap-
tation relates to actions taken by private actors, such
as farmers and businesses, in response to actual or
expected climate change, regardless of state interven-
tion. Policy-driven adaptation is the deliberate deci-
sion taken by public agencies to introduce various
legislative, economic or informative policy measures,
which either halt adverse practices or encourage the
adoption of favourable practices. Both private and
public/policy-driven adaptation measures can be un-
dertaken either in anticipation of climate change or as
a reaction to current climate variability. Anticipated
measures that are planned and implemented well
ahead of time have many advantages over ad-hoc re-
active measures. Although building adaptive capaci-
ties and taking adaptive actions are complementary
processes, adaptive actions usually follow later, once
adaptive capacity has been developed. This is the
route that Croatia should take.
This section also seeks to explore some “no regrets”
options for adaptation. “No regrets” measures involve
actions to improve economic efficiency or improve
the way in which the sector copes with existing pres-
Box 1: Adaptation capacity versus sensitivity and
vulnerability
The extent to which the private and public sec-
tors can adapt to climate change is often referred
to as the adaptation capacity of a country. This
term should not be confused with the sensitivity
of a country to climate change. The sensitivity of
a country refers to the magnitude of the climate
change damages that will occur in a country.
Adaptation capacity refers to the extent to which
these damages can be avoided, so that the dam-
ages – after adaptation – are relatively small.
Thus a country could experience very large cli-
mate change damages – and thus be very sensi-
tive to climate change - but also have the capaci-
ty to avoid many of these damages. On the other
hand, a country could have very limited climate
change damages, but not have the capacity to
reduce them very much. Thus one needs to mea-
sure both the sensitivity of a country as well as
its adaptive capacity.
The total vulnerability of a system – be it an eco-
nomic system or an environmental system – is
therefore a result of the exposure to current cli-
mate variability, the sensitivity to future climate
change, and the adaptive capacity (or lack there-
of ) of that system.
sures, like climate, population changes, economic
growth, and environmental quality. These actions will
also help to reduce climate change damages. Adapta-
tion options that satisfy these conditions are “no re-
grets” because even if the climate does not change,
implementing these measures will create net social
and economic benefits.
The main and most pressing problem right now, for
both the public and private sectors in Croatia, is that
very little is known about how climate change will af-
fect Croatia. This is by no means because Croatia lacks
highly-educated physical, natural and social scientists
What Would Climate Change Affect in Croatia?