Bedřich Moldan

Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments for the Czech Republic

This chapter summarizes the results of the Czech Republic’s assessments of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. This assessment has two principal parts: detailed analysis of possible scenarios of future climate, and analysis of vulnerability and adaptation for agriculture, forestry, water resources, and health. The findings are summarized here for all sectors except the health sector, where the assessment found that the potential impact of climate change was insignificant (Kveton and Kazmarova, 1995). For the agriculture sector, a decrease in precipitation could lead to a change in winter wheat yields of −3% to +16% depending on the climate scenario. A number of adaptation measures are proposed, including improved soil management, integrated pest control, and careful water use. The potential impact on forests could be large, especially because there are already several problems (e.g., prevalence of Norway spruce monoculture) in this sector that would be exacerbated. The main adaptation mechanisms proposed are increased species diversity and sustainable forest management. The impact on water resources was estimated by modeling four catchments. The result under most of the scenarios was, at a minimum, a one-third decrease in runoff.

Could Cohesion Policy push EU climate efforts

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this article is to evaluate the extent to which the Cohesion Policy of the EU contributes to its climate change mitigation effort. While climate change mitigation and the EU Cohesion Policy have been both thoroughly studied theoretically, the novelty of the present article lies in an analysis of their mutual relationship. Also, a unique feature of this research is an analysis of the contribution of the Cohesion Policy to climate change mitigation over a period of 20 years, including a comparison of the three last programming periods (2000–2006, 2007–2013 and 2014–2020). The results of this research suggest that, while the beginning of the new millennium saw the Cohesion Policy neglecting the issue of climate change mitigation, the current programming period (2014–2020) placed it among its key priorities. This conclusion is supported by a comprehensive set of data on five selected indicators. This article also displays the results against the perspective of the overall climate change mitigation objectives of the EU. POLICY RELEVANCE The present article shows how a policy, which used to be considered rather distant from climate change, progressively adopted climate change mitigation as one of its principal objectives. As such, it provides a practical guidance on the integration of climate change mitigation in other policy areas, which may be applied not only in a supranational organisation but also on a national, regional or local level.