Caucasus region facing climate change problems

“With regard to climate change, the Southern Caucasus region already shows climate induced changes with increasing temperatures, sea level rise, reduction and redistribution of river flows, decreasing snowfall and an upward shift of the snowline. More extreme weather events have also characterized the last ten years with flooding, landslides, forest fires and coastal erosion with significant economic losses and human casualties as a result. This has also caused big losses of livelihood assets of rural communities, particularly of the poor and marginalized. It is evident that low income households are more vulnerable to such negative impact,” said Sophiko Akhobadze, Executive Director of Regional Environmental Center of the Caucasus, as reports The Financial.

As temperatures rise, new pests and diseases are expected to harm crops, forests and livestock. Farmers need to be educated on how to choose the species that can adapt to climate change. Unfortunately, "non of the country in our region have a long term policy on integrated water resource management. In most cases there aren’t any disaster risk reduction and prevention strategy and action plan,” according to Akhobadze.