A book "Croatian natural resources - protection and responsible development" will be presented on the 30th of November at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

For the first time in one place Croatia will have a list of all its natural resources, so far underutilized in the development of the country. It is a comprehensive ''inventory'' of national treasures with proposals for the protection of Croatian natural resources as well as their rational utilization.

According to some estimates only the value of agricultural and forest resources in Croatia is around $17 billion. This study comprises energy, drinking and surface waters, metal and non metal raw materials, forests and forest land, agriculture and agricultural land, transport, digital and energy infrastructure as well as proposals for the rational management of natural resources.

Here is the list of the most important natural resources in Croatia:

1. Forests and forest land cover around 2,6 million hectares with wood stocks of around 552 million cubic meters and with 11 million cubic meters of new wood stocks each year. Forest resources are worth $6,9 billion.

2. Agricultural land covers 2,96 million hectares, whilst 90 percent of this area is cultivable. Unfortunately, less than 50 percent of land is being cultivated. The value of the agricultural land in Croatia is about $10,13 billion.

3. Croatia has 1246 islands on which only 6 percent of land is fertile, whilst their share in the Croatian economy is only 5 to 7 percent. The Croatian islands are geographically divided into 79 islands, 525 islets and 642 rocks and reefs.

4. Drinking and surface waters are the great wealth of the country which is by quality and quantity among the best in Europe and in the world. Croatia has placed as the 5th in Europe and the 42nd in the world by its water richness.

Krka National Park 

5. Transport, digital and energy infrastructure includes data analysis on highways (1273km), railways (2100km), waterways (804km), the eletric power network (18,500km) and fibre optic cables (13,000km).

6. Croatia has significant hydrocarbon reserves. The country spends twice as much primary energy than it produces. Promising areas for the discovery of new stocks are the Panonian Basin, Dinarides, northern, central and southern Adriatic.

7. Thanks to the energy of wind as an important resource Croatia has twelve windmills worth 315 million Euros.

8. The sun as an energy resource is of national interest. If the country used more benefits of the solar energy, there would be 30,000 new job openings.

9. There are 450 species of fish in the Adriatic sea. Consumption of fish is around 10 kg per capita a year. The value of purchased and sold fish in 2012 was 302 milion Kunas. Catch and fish farming varies around 70,000 tonnes annually.