The role of agricultural policies in conditioning the adaptation of irrigated agriculture to climate change in the Burana basin (Emilia-Romagna, Italy).

Population growth and the increased frequency of drought events severely limited water availability for irrigation in some southern European Member states with the risk of economic hardship and land abandonment (Christian et al., 2011). Only recently, The European Union tailored its priorities of intervention toward a more sustainable agriculture, introducing the Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/CE) and revising the CAP reform (EC, 2012), smoothing the adaptation of the agricultural sector to climate change. The present study tackle the issue of adaptation to climatic change by analysing the connection between CAP policy intervention and crop choices within the Burana Basin (Emilia-Romagna, Italy) through a mathematical programming stochastic model. Expected results include structural and policy constraints identification. Conclusions highlight the need for a rearrangement of the economic instruments promoted by current regulation in order to facilitate the adaptation of the agricultural sector to climate change.