The purpose of this project is to analyze how cooperation (or lack thereof) affects adaptation to climate change in rural communities in the southern part of Romania. With more than 15 million hectares of agriculture land (World Bank, 2012) out of which 9 million is arable, Romanian agriculture employs 30% of workforce and represents 8% of its GDP.
While the southern part of the country has the largest areas of arable land and best soil, historically the agriculture production in this region has been affected by drought. Before the 1990s anti-communist revolution, there were 375 large irrigation systems covering more than 30% of the arable land. However, once the state system had fallen, most of the communities were either unable or unwilling to impose rules to govern the irrigation systems. As a result, the great majority of it got destroyed during 1990-1995 and less than 10% of land remained irrigated.
As climate change settles in, it leads to increasing spells of drought and stronger winds in this part of Romania. If nothing is done, the soil gets destroyed and the fields’ productivity will decrease dramatically. Insurance does not cover drought issues and, anyway, few farmers buy insurance. The farmers can either get large amounts of capital to built their own irrigation system, plant new forest curtains and cooperate to use the existing system where this is still possible or they can only watch how their land becomes desert and production disappears. The research proposed here will analyze how historical context affects cooperation and trust between community members and, in turn, how these social climate characteristics help or hinder community response to climate changes. Quantitative and qualitative methods will be employed in this study; the qualitative part will mainly focus on two sub regions: Ialomita/Calarasi (where the effects of climate change are not yet fully present) and southern Oltenia (where an estimated 100,000 ha are already transformed into sand). Quantitative social data from surveys and censuses as well as climate related data will be used to assess the depth of the climate issues and the social response in these communities.
