Bregu: Green Transition in Western Balkans Must Be Equitable

Climate Change (Photo: Pixabay.com)

Climate change in the Western Balkans, just like throughout Europe, jeopardizes the health, puts jobs at risk, deepens inequality and burdens the resilience of some of the most vulnerable economies, stated the commissioner of the Pan European Commission for Health and Sustainable Development of the World Health Organization, Majlinda Bregu.

In the text titled “Climate Change Already Changing Labor Market in Western Balkans,” published on July 10 on the portal of the World Economic Forum, Bregu stated that almost three million jobs in the Western Balkans were either directly exposed to climate shocks, or jeopardized by the green transition. In her words, it is expected that the countries in the region would lose up to 16 percent of their gross domestic product due to effects of extreme weather.

Commenting on the cost of non-action, Bregu said that, in 2014 alone, floods erased more than 51,000 jobs. She added that the 2024 floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina resulted in the displacement of more than a thousand households and forces small enterprises, which were already struggling, to close down.

Meanwhile, the Montenegrin coast is faced with an increasing risk of fire and erosion. In North Macedonia and Kosovo, heat waves make work in village environments and construction more difficult and are becoming increasingly dangerous, while in Albania, where a third of the population is still employed in agriculture, yield from 15,000 hectares was destroyed in just one flood in 2017.