Produced under UNDP’s BES-Net II project in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with support from Germany’s BMUKN through the International Climate Initiative (IKI), this 2026 publication by Prof. Dragan Čomić argues that the country’s forests, protected areas and wetlands should be valued as development assets, not only as objects of protection. It builds on a gap identified in the national ecosystem assessment (NEA BiH): the lack of data and methods for measuring how ecosystems store carbon. The publication sets out core climate terminology and documents climate impacts already affecting BiH. These include repeated floods, droughts and wildfires, the 2014 floods (damage of around 4 billion KM), and a sharp rise in burned forest area since 2020. It also outlines the country’s NDC targets and a large climate finance gap: roughly €1.51 billion is needed each year to 2030, against historic investment of about €0.23 billion a year.
The second half explains how compliance and voluntary carbon markets work. It shows that forestry and land use is the largest and most resilient segment of the voluntary market, with removal credits commanding the highest prices. It reviews nature-based project types relevant to BiH: afforestation and reforestation, REDD, improved forest management, agroforestry, harvested wood products and biomass. It also points to the country’s potential, including about 2.8 million hectares of forest, roughly 400,000 hectares suitable for afforestation, and the region’s first forestry carbon project, run by the public forest enterprise Herceg-bosanske šume with ECOBASE. The publication concludes that this potential depends on stronger technical capacity, coordinated institutions, a functioning MRV system, a carbon project registry and a domestic ETS. Its central message is that well-conserved nature is a foundation for development, not an obstacle to it.
