Development Projects’ Assessment in the Danube–Tisza Interfluve—A Climate Change Perspective

The area of the Danube–Tisza Interfluve is of particular concern in terms of climate change, not only today, but it has also been in the past. In our research, we investigated the development projects of the Danube–Tisza Interfluve implemented in the last two financial cycles (2007–2013 and 2014–2020) of the European Union, regarding their climate-related impacts. Data about the development projects were retrieved from the official national project database. Development areas with positive and negative impacts regarding climate change were identified, and projects were assigned to these categories or a neutral category based on the content analysis of project titles and descriptions as well as the eligible activities included in the calls for proposals. Positive projects were also scored based on the approach they contribute to tackling climate change (mitigation: 3 points, adaptation: 2 points and indirect impact: 1 point). The number of these projects and the financial support they received were calculated for every development area category and also weighted by the impact scores. Our results show that from the 39,232 development projects completed over two EU financial cycles (2007–2020), only 11% were considered positive, less than 3% were considered negative and the rest were neutral regarding their climate-change-related impacts. Projects with negative impacts received more funding than projects with positive funding. Nevertheless, a positive trend can be seen, while more projects with positive impacts were implemented in the second cycle (2014–2020), receiving larger financial support. Our analysis also shows that development projects based on nature restoration and coupled with awareness raising can have the best impact score while they serve both mitigation and adaptation purposes and also have indirect impacts by fostering attitude change. We can conclude that much more emphasis should be laid on supporting projects for climate change mitigation and adaptations to reach our goal of climate neutrality.