With financing from the Green Climate Fund, the project "Advancing Albania’s planning for medium and long-term adaptation through the development of a National Adaptation Planning (NAP) process" will support the Government of Albania to increase its capacity to address the country’s climate change vulnerabilities.

Albania’s primarily rural population is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, where extreme rain events frequently result in destructive flooding, while agricultural livelihoods and drinking water supplies are threatened during dry periods. As temperatures rise, climate scenarios predict increased severity and frequency of these extreme wet and dry conditions, along with decreasing total annual rainfall. These changes place Albania’s population at risk and pose a threat to the burgeoning hydropower and tourism industries.

To address these vulnerabilities, the Government of Albania launched its national adaptation plan (NAP) process in February 2015, with the support of GIZ and UNDP, through consultations with national stakeholders and a stocktaking exercise. A preliminary roadmap for NAP implementation was formulated and validated by representatives from the Ministry of Tourism and Environment (the lead agency working to advance the NAP) as well as stakeholders from the Inter-ministerial Working Group on Climate Change (IMWGCC). Through consultations during the stocktaking and roadmap development process, the Government of Albania has defined the NAP process as key to identifying, prioritizing, and funding adaptation interventions as well as increasing technical capacity for CCA planning and mainstreaming climate change into its policies, including the National Strategy for Development and Integration (NDSI) and sectorial strategies. In addition, this effort is concurrent and consistent with Albania’s ongoing GCF Readiness Programme and resulting Country Work Programme, supported by UNEP.

The analytical exercises highlighted the existing weaknesses and demonstrated the prevailing barriers to climate change adaptation (CCA) planning in Albania. The results confirmed that in order to adequately address climate change vulnerabilities, Albania must overcome information gaps, vulnerability assessments and climate adaptation planning capacity weaknesses, and a lack of awareness of CCA – both at the national and subnational levels. In addition, climate change is not integrated into existing environmental and development policies, or their associated budget priorities, and financing appropriations for funding CCA are absent.

The underlying challenge is that currently there is no comprehensive framework for adaptation in Albania. The National Communications provide a preliminary assessment of adaptation priorities, and a national NAP Framework Document was developed as part of the NAP preparation and stocktaking process in 2016. To leverage these preliminary activities towards climate resilience, this readiness effort aims to address goals identified in the NAP Framework Document that will address the weaknesses and barriers mentioned above. These goals include: capacity development for implementation of a NAP (Goals 4-5), mainstreaming of CCA (Goals 6-11), raising awareness and institutional capacity to address climate change risks (Goals 14-16), and ensuring budgeting and financing for sustained climate change adaptation efforts (Goals 12-13).