Romania Toward a Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Economy

Abstract

By European standards, Romania is a low urbanized country. There exists a rising trend towards suburbanization, however, that is not fully captured by Romania’s urban statistics. The country’s urbanization rate of 55 percent has remained fairly constant over the past two decades, despite significant population migration out of the country, and a strong suburbanization trend in areas on the immediate outskirts of major cities. Because central government demographers still categorize some of these regions outside of the urban core as rural, this shift has not yet made its way into the official population statistics. If this were to happen, the urbanization rate could rise to 65 percent. The objective of the urban sector analysis was to provide insights to the Romanian Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests (MEWF) on opportunities to change the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in Romanian cities, using the Bucharest–Ilfov metropolitan region (BIMR) as an example.