CLIMATE ADAPTATION READINESS OF BULGARIAN RURAL AREAS

Abstract

Adaptation to climate change has been raised on the political agenda since the Paris Agreement
(2015). The European Climate Law (2021) recognizes that adaptation as a key component of the
long-term response to climate change and requires from member states to enhance their adaptive
capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability as well as maximize the co-benefits with
other policies and legislation at both national and regional levels. Local governments thus became
an increasing important actor to prepare and act on climate adaptation. The objective of this paper
is to assess the climate adaptation readiness of Bulgarian rural municipalities. The study is based on
ord and King’s conceptual model (2015) for assessing adaptation readiness at various governance
levels based on factors without which adaptation is unlikely to occur. Four factors are assessed in
the study: political leadership on adaptation, institutional organisation for adaptation, availability of
usable science to inform decision-making, and funding for adaptation planning, implementation and
evaluation. Criteria and scores for assessing the factors are developed to address the Bulgarian context.
The analytical method applied is content analysis of municipal policy documents. The Municipal
integrated development plans (PIRO) for the 2021 – 2027 programming period are required to
address their climate mitigation and adaptation needs in a specific section of the plans. By June
2024, 218 rural municipalities have published their PIROs online and 14 were either not available
online or not officially adopted.
The results show an average adaptation readiness score across the 218 rural municipalities at 3.22,
indicating a ‘fair’ level of readiness. No rural municipalities reached a ‘very good’ or ‘e cellent’
level of readiness; 34% scored ‘poor’ level of readiness, 43% – ‘far’ and 23% – ‘good’. The ‘good’
scores are the highest achieved in this assessment and result from several combinations – a priority
is given to adaptation and/or a combination of adaptation measures and/or responsible unit(s) defined
and/or budget is estimated. The ‘poor’ scores are achieved in PIRO which tick the bare minimum
for the PIRO to be approved – only general discussion of climate issues. A comparison of the results
for ‘intermediate’ and ‘predominantly rural’ areas indicate no significant differences between these
two categories in the EU rural areas typology. Still, the mapped individual adaptation readiness
scores indicate certain geographical clustering of ‘good’ and ‘poor’ scores which requires further
assessment.