Socio-economic Scenarios of Agricultural Land Use Change in Central and Eastern European Countries

The study presented in this paper is part of the ACCELERATES (Assessing Climate Change Effects on Land Use and Ecosystems from Regional Analysis to The European Scale) project whose main goal is the construction of integrated predictions of future land use in Europe. The scenarios constructed in the project include estimates not only due to changes in the climate baseline, but also estimates due to possible future changes in socio-economics. The overall aim of the ACCELERATES was to assess the vulnerability of European agroecosystems based on economic and environmental considerations in term of both their sensitivity and capacity to adapt changes. The historical background, the type of economy, the policy aim and governance and importance of agriculture in the overall national economy have created large differences between Western and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). This paper focuses on vulnerability of the farm sector and rural economy of CEECs.