May the 29th, 2023 - Could the territory of the Republic of Croatia and its immediate surroundings become an arid, hostile semi-desert in the future as a result of climate change? Dunja Mazzocco Drvar of the Directorate for Climate Activities at the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development believes so.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Dunja Mazzocco Drvar, the director of the Directorate for Climate Activities at the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, recently commented on what awaits the Republic of Croatia in the future when it comes to the ever-pressing threat of climate change.

"We're moving more and more quickly towards Croatia becoming a semi-arid, semi-desert area, because it's located in the Mediterranean which is an area that particularly feels climate changes when they occur, and generally much more strongly than the global average.

Droughts have already become a very big problem here. We have a situation in which 30 percent of our damages caused by climate and weather extremes are due to droughts, which shows that this is the form the weather disaster with which we already have the most problems.

Immediately after the drought comes the flood. This is what is the key when it comes to climate change, these strong extremes, we've had the opportunity to see what these floods can be like and we can now clearly see that we will have more and more problems with them going forward. After a year that's been extremely dry like last year, it isn't at all surprising that one like this will follow that is extremely rainy," explained Dunja Mazzoco Drvar for N1, referencing the droughts of 2022 and the terrible situation much of the country and nearby Italy has suffered recently owing to very high water levels and flooding.

She also commented on Croatia's climate ambitions and aims, and says that most of the work is currently being done on the adoption of new European Union legislation.

"We'll soon be done with that, now, one by one, these regulations are being passed, and then the next step will be the introduction of these new regulations into the new European climate package Fit for 55 into Croatian national legislation. This will then mean that not only laws and regulations must be passed, but that some kind of implementation mechanisms should also be set up, and we have a long way to go to achieve what we set out to do with the European Green Plan, to turn it into a real action, that is, to legislate it," she concluded.

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