Romania : Agriculture and Rural Development Rapid Assessment

Climate change is a huge challenge for the agriculture and rural development (ARD) sector in Romania. On the one hand, agriculture is a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and must therefore be expected to contribute towards the climate change mitigation goals of the Europe 2020 strategy. European farmers, foresters, rural businesses, and other local people therefore need to start paying much greater attention to climate change and the growing uncertainty that it will bring to their day-to-day lives and longer term strategies for production, management, investment, and community development. This report is one of six rapid sectoral analyses undertaken within the framework of component B of the World Bank's Romania climate change Reimbursable Advisory Service (RAS) Program. The title of component B is "identify and integrate climate actions into the 2014-2020 sector operational programs". The specific objective of this report is to contribute to the successful mainstreaming of climate action into Romania's post-2013 rural development policy - namely the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) co-financed National Rural Development Program (NRDP) for Romania 2014-2020. This report builds upon a number of working documents produced by the European commission on the theme of mainstreaming climate change in 2014-2020 rural development policy. The report contains 6 main sections: an introduction to the characteristics of the ARD sector in Romania.; an overview of the vulnerabilities and risks from climate change in the ARD sector in Romania, beginning with an introduction to the changes in baseline climate that are currently observed and predicted; a brief review of existing national strategies, policies, and initiatives of relevance to the ARD sector in Romania, including a description of the EAFRD measures related to climate action that were included in the NRDP for Romania 2007-2013;the identification and description of priorities for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the ARD sector in Romania; an introduction to the opportunities for mainstreaming climate actions in the forthcoming NRDP for Romania for 2014-2020, including a basic intervention logic (the foundation of all strategic programming for the EAFRD) and some examples of specific climate actions that can be supported by the EAFRD; a closing section highlighting the uncertainties regarding the findings of this rapid sectoral analysis and the need for further work.