Republic of Moldova: Selected Issues

This Selected Issues paper discusses opportunities and challenges of climate adaptation policies in Moldova. Strengthening resilience to natural disasters will require significant adaptation investments in the coming years. This paper shows that such investments can substantially reduce output losses caused by natural disasters, will be more cost-efficient than responding to disasters ex-post, and will contribute to boost Moldova’s long-term economic growth and support its development objectives. However, due to limited domestic financial resources in a complex economic environment, Moldova cannot finance the most-needed adaptation investments without endangering public debt sustainability or hindering its growth potential. Therefore, external support will be critical to help meet the adaptation needs.