Assoc. Prof. Dr. Laurențiu Ciornei,
Director Centre for Agroforestry Biodiversity Studies
and Research/Romanian Academy
There are nations that built their power on merchant fleets, colonial empires, industrial production, oil reserves, or technological innovation. There are states that have shaped—and continue to shape—history through their control of maritime routes, financial markets, and strategic energy resources. In every era, power has had its own geography and its own raw material. What changes from one century to another is not the existence of resources, but the way societies understand their value.
Viewed from this perspective, Romania finds itself in one of the most paradoxical situations within the European Union. For more than three decades, public debate has focused almost obsessively on what the country lacks: highways, hospitals, infrastructure, investment, administrative capacity, and competitiveness. The list is long and, in many respects, justified. Far less attention has been devoted to what Romania already possesses— and, more importantly, to the strategic significance of these assets in a world that is beginning to rediscover the importance of natural capital.
Perhaps one of the greatest intellectual errors of recent decades has been to regard biodiversity as an environmental issue rather than a matter of power.
For politicians constrained by electoral cycles, administrators focused on budgets, or investors seeking short-term returns, forests, rivers, ecosystems, and wildlife often appear as secondary concerns, almost decorative elements of the landscape. In reality, throughout the twenty- first century, they may become precisely the opposite: strategic resources.
Western Europe increasingly understands this reality, largely because it has already consumed a significant portion of its natural capital during the industrial revolution and the accelerated modernization of the last two centuries. What remains a familiar landscape for many Romanians has become, in numerous European countries, a rarity or has disappeared altogether.
Few people fully appreciate that Romania contains the most significant stretch of Europe’s most important river. The Danube is far more than a watercourse and much more than a commercial route. It represents one of the continent’s major biological axes—an ecological corridor connecting Central Europe to the Black Sea and sustaining ecosystems of extraordinary complexity. Where its floodplains still function in conditions close to their natural state, they constitute not only an ecological heritage but also one of Europe’s most remarkable forms of biological infrastructure.
Equally overlooked is the fact that Romania hosts the largest populations of large carnivores within the European Union. Bears, wolves, lynx, and wildcats are often viewed primarily through the lens of public controversy or conflicts between local communities and authorities. Yet beyond these legitimate management challenges lies a more fundamental reality: the presence of such species demonstrates that Romania still preserves ecosystems extensive and functional enough to support the apex of ecological food webs. Across much of Europe, this has long ceased to be possible.
The same observation applies to forests. While public debate frequently oscillates between emotion, activism, and controversy, a fundamental reality remains largely unknown: Romania contains the largest and most compact areas of primary and old-growth forests in the European Union. On a continent where most forest ecosystems have been transformed, fragmented, or simplified by centuries of human intervention, the existence of such forests represents not merely an ecological advantage but also a scientific, economic, and strategic one.
Yet Romania’s uniqueness extends even further.
Few European countries can claim the abundance of water resources found within Romania. Significant geothermal reserves, some of the largest natural mineral water resources in Europe, extensive river networks, and still- functional aquatic ecosystems together form a national asset whose importance reaches far beyond the traditional logic of economic exploitation.
At a time when water is increasingly recognized as one of the major geopolitical resources of the twenty-first century, this reality acquires an entirely new significance.
Perhaps the least understood of Romania’s advantages is its remarkable biogeographical diversity. No other country in the European Union encompasses within its territory all five major European biogeographical regions: Alpine, Continental, Pannonian, Steppe, and Pontic. What may appear to be a technical detail conceals an extraordinary reality. Romania represents, within a single national territory, an ecological synthesis of a substantial part of the European continent. From this derive its species richness, habitat diversity, landscape complexity, and capacity to sustain ecological processes that have disappeared or become severely fragmented elsewhere in Europe.
Taken together, these advantages raise an unsettling question: how has a country possessing one of Europe’s most valuable concentrations of natural capital come to speak so little about this wealth? The answer probably lies in the way development itself continues to be understood.
For two centuries, progress was associated with transforming nature into economic output. Forests became timber. Rivers became transportation corridors. Soil became agricultural production. Wetlands became construction sites. Within the industrial logic of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, value was generated through conversion.
The twenty-first century is beginning to operate according to a different logic
Climate change, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, fragile supply chains, and mounting pressure on natural resources are transforming natural capital into a strategic asset. Suddenly, the ability of a territory to preserve functional ecological processes becomes as important as its capacity to generate energy or manufacture industrial goods.
The scholar and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written extensively about the importance of resilient systems capable of withstanding shocks and uncertainty. Viewed through this lens, Romania’s ecosystems represent more than a natural inheritance; they constitute an infrastructure of resilience. They provide clean water, regulate local climates, support agriculture, conserve genetic resources, and reduce the vulnerabilities of societies exposed to increasingly rapid and unpredictable change.
This may well become one of the defining issues of the coming decades. Romania will have to decide whether it regards biodiversity as a problem to be administered or as a strategic asset to be intelligently developed and protected. The difference between these approaches is profound. The first produces regulations. The second produces vision.
From this perspective, biodiversity no longer belongs exclusively to biologists, foresters, or conservation specialists. It becomes an economic, geopolitical, and even civilizational issue. Europe will require food security, water security, ecological resilience, genetic resources, and territories capable of maintaining biological balances that many other regions have already lost. Romania is uniquely positioned to contribute to these needs.
The paradox is that while the rest of Europe is gradually discovering the value of this heritage, Romania still hesitates to recognize it as one of its most important strategic resources.
Perhaps the true wealth of a nation is not measured solely by what it can extract from nature, but also by what it is capable of preserving for future generations. And if the twenty-first century indeed becomes, as many predict, a century defined by competition for resources and resilience, Romania may ultimately discover that one of the most significant forms of power it possesses lies precisely where, for far too long, it has seen only landscape.
