Supporting Armenia to advance their NAP process

Armenia is a small landlocked country in the Caucasus region with a mostly mountainous terrain, fast flowing rivers and few forests. Its highland continental climate means it is subject to hot summers and cold winters. Agriculture is a core sector in Armenia, employing 44 percent of the working population, although its contribution to the economy is on the decline, with the services and industrial sectors growing instead. Climate change is already affecting Armenia, with an annual mean temperature increase of 1.03 °C and decrease in precipitation of 10 percent recorded during the period 1935 – 2012. Extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and hailstorms, are increasing in frequency, and desertification and land degradation are set to worsen. Agricultural lands cover 69 percent of the territory and 80 percent of these lands are already being affected by climate change impacts, with decreasing crop yields projected in the future.

 

Although Armenia is in the final stages of transitioning from a semi-presidential system to a parliamentary republic, it has developed an institutional framework that can facilitate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Strategic Program of Prospective Development 2014-2025, the overarching development strategy, mentions the limitations that climate change will pose to economic growth. More specifically, the National Strategy on Disaster Risk Management (2017) integrates climate change and incorporates SDGs. 

 

These policies and strategies take a strong focus on mitigation, however, in Armenia’s INDC, which later became their First NDC, as they ratified the Paris Agreement in 2017, adaptation is given more weight. The NDC prioritises the following sectors as those most vulnerable to climate change and in need of adaptation interventions: natural ecosystems; human health; water resource management; agriculture, including fisheries and forests; energy; human settlements and infrastructure; and tourism. It identifies the foundation of its adaptation strategy to be the application of “an ecosystem-based approach to mitigation and adaptation actions, giving preference to balanced and combined actions”. Another key document, that reflects on the consequences of climate change scenarios, is the Third National Communication to the UNFCCC, submitted in 2015. The Fourth communication will be developed in 2019.