December 4th, 2023 | Meta
Mitigating The Effects of Climate Change In Bosnia & Herzegovina
Every country experiences climate change differently. The increasingly record-breaking storms that pummel the Philippines. The melting away lands of the Inuit in Canada. The extreme summertime heat in the UK. For Bosnia & Herzegovina, as well as its neighbour Serbia, it has chiefly been flooding. Anyone familiar with Bosnia will know that flooding has long been a concern, as the famous Ivo Andrić novel The Bridge On The Drina reveals. But climate change has exacerbated these issues to levels heretofore unseen; in 2010, 2014, and 2019, cyclones devastated the region, in 2014 causing the worst flooding seen in 120 years. Now, after the war, the floodwaters carried the added risk of sweeping undetonated mines to unknown locations.
Bosnia & Herzegovina has one major official government document to illuminate and structure its plans regarding climate change: the Climate Change Adaptation and Low Emissions Development Strategy. It makes a key point, which is further supported by all three National Communications to the UNFCCC (done in 2010, 2013, and 2017); that assessments of climate change in Bosnia & Herzegovina were lacking due to insufficient monitoring and analysis structures.
But not all news is bleak. In December of 2022, it submitted its climate change National Adaptation Plan (NAP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC. These are plans created by “developing countries” (as the UNFCCC calls them) that outline designs to combat anthropogenic climate change.
And, according to a UNDP factsheet, recent donor-funded programmes include GEF-SCCF /UNDP “Technology transfer for climate resilient flood management in Vrbas River Basin”, among other projects.
However, with worsening ethnic tensions, there is some concern about the future of these plans. The National Adaptation Plan went forward with the cooperation of the Government of Republika Srpska, the relevant ministries of the Federation of BiH, and the Brčko District. But with secession of the Republika Srpska on the table, this cooperation might not continue to be feasible. Only time can tell.
Sources:
2014, six years later: Bosnia and Herzegovina and the floods
Bosnia and Herzegovina finalize country’s first climate change National Adaptation Plan
United Nations Climate Change: Submitted NAPs
United Nations Climate Change: About
Learning to See the Climate Crisis
National Adaptation Plans in focus: Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina