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Lake Balaton Regional Vulnerability Assessment

Vulnerability assessment and adaptation strategies

In close cooperation with the Division of Early Warning and Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP-DEWA), the Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency (LBDCA), GRID-Geneva and several additional local and international partners, IISD is leading an integrated vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning initiative related to Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe.

The overall purpose of the project is to contribute to a better understanding of the Lake Balaton ecological and socio-systems vulnerability arising from multiple forces of change. The project will be examining the prospect that, due to the constellation of local and global causes, potentially including climate change as well as the unique attributes of the lake, Balaton is entering a phase of critical vulnerabilities. Going beyond the assessment of vulnerabilities, the project will involve connecting analysis to policy planning and the consideration of regional adaptation options in a consultative process with affected regional stakeholders.

Documents

• Investigating Stakeholder Decision Priorities for Adapting to Climate Change in the Lake Balaton Recreational Area of Hungary (PDF - 788 KB)
  This report provides a summary of the outcomes of a series of capacity-building workshops conducted in Hungary's Lake Balaton region as part of the Balaton Adaptation Project. The main purpose of the workshops was to discuss local stakeholders' past and present decisions about adapting to climate change in the broader context of other forces of global and local change, and to outline adaptation alternatives that could be implemented in the future. The four workshops were conducted between October 26, 2007 and February 27, 2008 in three towns around Lake Balaton: Siófok, Keszthely and Balatonalmádi. Tourism is the main source of income for small businesses and municipalities in the towns around Lake Balaton. Recent changes in weather patterns during the main tourist season (and beyond) increased the interest of regional actors, including the Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency, in investigating local vulnerabilities, adaptation options and the capacities needed to successfully tackle the local impacts of climate change. Building on what we heard in the four workshops, we present recommendations for initiatives that promote sustainable development projects that are based on traditional local knowledge, support conservation initiatives, diversify tourist attractions and services, and adjust current development priorities and legislation to create opportunities for implementing such initiatives.

• Lake Balaton Integrated Vulnerability Assessment, Early Warning and Adaptation Strategies (PDF - 586 KB)
  The Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency (National Implementing Agency) is a Hungarian non-profit institution and the development agency of the Lake Balaton Development Council. The agency performs professional and operative duties promoting the development of the Lake Balaton Resort Area related to the activities of the council. The aim of the agency is to provide effective assistance so that Lake Balaton and its vicinity can become one of the most attractive and successful regions in Hungary and Europe for local people, tourists and local workers, as well as investors. The most important tasks of regional cooperation for the Lake Balaton Resort Area are sustainable tourism development, environmental protection, traffic infrastructure and the development of human resources.

• Developing a System of Sustainability Indicators for the Lake Balaton Region (PDF - 469 KB)
  Lake Balaton has a long history of scientific research and monitoring, making it one of the best studied lakes in the world. Although this may be the case, the abundance of scientific data is in stark contrast with the paucity of systematized, regularly updated trend information available to the general public and decision-makers in an easy-to-access format. Information is not only scattered across countless agencies, often it is available only after paying a considerable fee. The purpose of creating this paper was to describe how an indicators system is created and used as a platform to compare environmental, economic and social trends in an environmentally sensitive area with heavy dependence on tourism. Compiling cross-cutting datasets presents a variety of problems: there are many data gaps, few consistent time series and the data (collected at considerable expense) are frequently left to sit in formats that make it useless except to the most dedicated experts. This greatly limits comprehensive analyses between economic, social and environmental domains. Republished with permission of the Hungarian Journal of Landscape Ecology.

The project is designated as a pilot assessment under UNEPs Early Warning Strategy and it is expected to offer lessons for similar initiatives elsewhere.

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