Remediation of landslides to cost EUR 11 billion

Remediation of landslides to cost EUR 11 billion

Serbia does not have that money, but it can be secured from domestic sources as well as from foreign donations, it was said at the symposium where the start of a project on coordinating landside data and training municipalities for landslide monitoring was announced.

The project is worth EUR 3.4 million, donated by the government of Japan.

Minister of Mining and Energy Aleksandar Antic said that around 30 percent of Serbian territory is affected by some kind of soil instability - landslides, rockfalls or river bank failures - and noted that the damage caused by natural disasters in Serbia is growing due to climate change.

The damage caused by last year's floods amounts to several hundreds of millions of euros, while the floods that hit the country in 2006 caused around EUR 30 million worth of damage, he said.

The landslide remediation project, carried out with assistance from the government of Japan and through the UNDP office in Serbia, will last until February next year.