A Climate for Change

Human Development Report - Croatia 2008 Vulnerability to Climate Change in Croatia – a Summary^179

sociated with climate variability and change. Further-
more, planning for new buildings should be energy
efficient ensuring the buildings are more comfortable
and cheaper to keep cool, especially on the coast.

For coastal zone management, it is recommended that
current regulations on construction near the coast-line
be enforced and that potential sea level rise be con-
sidered when formulating future major infrastructure
projects, such as sewage systems. Furthermore, Inte-
grated Coastal Zone Management principles should
be included in the governance of coastal areas along
with the provision of indicative planning information
to the private sector.

In the health sector, continued public education and
preparation for extreme heat events and – if necessary

• bad ozone days is both a necessary and “no regrets”
  option that should be adopted.

For the fresh water resources sector, important no re-
grets options include decreasing water losses in dis-
tribution systems, improving flood-plane zoning and
flood-proofing practices to reduce current flooding
damages, installation of flood warning systems in ar-
eas now prone to flash flooding, continuing to stream-
line disaster risk planning and management, im-
proved wetlands management to preserve ecosystem
services and developing future electrical generating
capacity plans to account for the effects of droughts
under the current climate. All of these measures repre-
sent major no regrets options that would help reduce
future climate change damages.

In agriculture, developing crop models that show how
different crops respond to climate and management
variables would help with crop management under ex-
isting conditions. Furthermore, developing an econom-
ic model for the sector, to include better information
about the inputs and outputs of the sector – including
crop production, crop mixes and prices, as well as gross
and net margins for various crops – would help formu-
late better agricultural policy and assess the manage-
ment and technology options for coping with climate
variability/ climate change issues in soils and would
help change other management practices.

One aspect of climate vulnerability and climate change

that should be pursued is preparation for extreme

weather conditions. This would include heat waves,

fires, “bora” wind events, floods, etc. Coordination be-

tween the DHMZ and other emergency management

systems should continue to be enhanced. This should

also include regional integration and harmonization

of warning systems.

11.3.2. Further research

Without first developing the capacity to simulate cli-

mate change impacts and to evaluate the benefits

and costs of policies and measures to adapt to climate

change, it is very difficult to say what measures are

needed in Croatia. Also, the uncertainty associated

with both global climate policy and existing climate

change projections at the local level, is currently so

great that Croatia must be cautious about either do-

ing too little or doing too much, if these projections

turn out to be wrong. As such, adaptation measures

that do not have a “no regrets” component will require

additional research and investigation, once the ca-

pacity to do this has been developed in Croatia. This

includes developing the capacity to project climate

change at the regional/local level; to transform these

climate changes into physical impacts; to estimate the

economic value of these damages; and to evaluate the

benefits and costs of alternative adaptation measures.

The tourism sector is currently very important because

of the amount of foreign spending it generates within

Croatia. The sector is quite decentralised and market

forces have driven most of the post-war economic de-

velopments that have occurred. However, if tourists

stop visiting Croatia in large numbers in the summer,

due to the extreme heat, the options for recovering

these tourist visits by Croatia alone are somewhat lim-

ited, consisting primarily of developing less-climate

sensitive recreation alternatives and working collec-

tively with other nations to allow greater flexibility for

vacation travel in the off- and shoulder seasons. More-

over, it is possible that, under the worst-case scenario,