Outlook on Climate Change Adaptation in the South Caucasus Mountains

250 industrial plants have been subject to flooding since 1978. If these events increase in the future as a result of climate change, it becomes even more important to increase the resilience of industrial structures (MoENR 2010). It is currently unknown whether the planning of new industrial construction takes the impacts of climate change into consideration (UNECE 2010). An example of the consequences of poorly managed toxic waste comes from the Tsana arsenic mining sites in Georgia. When the three mining sites were abandoned in 1992, approximately 50,000 tons of arsenic ore were left in surface and some amount of highly toxic materials were in unprotected containers. The three sites are close to the Tskhenistkali River, a tributary to Rioni River, and so the leaking arsenic waste posed a threat to both nearby villages and the whole of Western Georgia. There was a high risk that the waste would be released into the environment when the Tskhenistkali River flooded in 2013. Fortunately, no further contamination due to the flooding has been observed thus far. Due to a growing concern regarding the contamination threat from the three sites, a joint project of OSCE, UNEP/OCHA and UNDP Georgia in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection was initiated in 2013 partly with the goal of containing the waste more securely on-site (UNEP/ ENVSEC 2014). In spite of the increasing need to consider climate change when planning industrial activities, little research has been done on how industrial structures will respond to, or interact with, climate change. An overview of the current risk zones of, for example, old and unstable industrial sites, is lacking but clearly necessary if catastrophic consequences are to be avoided in the future (UNECE 2010).

Oil derricks on the shore near Baku, Azerbaijan

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