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Author Emmanuel Skoufias |
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The poverty and welfare impacts of climate change quantifying the effects, identifying the adaptation strategies
Although poverty remains widespread in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, substantial progress has been made especially in the past three decades. Nevertheless, this report stresses that climate change is likely to reduce agricultural productivity, which will directly affect poor people's livelihood assets including health, access to water and other natural resources, homes and infrastructure. Increasing climatic variability will make poor households even more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions, which could in turn exacerbate the incidence, severity and persistence of poverty in developi ...
The poverty and welfare impacts of climate change quantifying the effects, identifying the adaptation strategies
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Available online: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/9384/714510PUB097800C [...]
Published by: World Bank ; 2012
Although poverty remains widespread in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, substantial progress has been made especially in the past three decades. Nevertheless, this report stresses that climate change is likely to reduce agricultural productivity, which will directly affect poor people's livelihood assets including health, access to water and other natural resources, homes and infrastructure. Increasing climatic variability will make poor households even more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions, which could in turn exacerbate the incidence, severity and persistence of poverty in developing countries. The report surveys the research terrain concerning the effects of climate change on poverty looking closely at vulnerable rural populations in Indonesia and Mexico, where weather shocks have measurable short term, if not immediate, effects on rural livelihoods. The report highlights how the low-income farmers of Indonesia and Mexico are at the human forefront of climate change.
Language(s): English
Format: Digital (Free)Tags: Climate ; Climate change ; Agroclimatology ; Poverty and Poverty reduction ; Social protection and welfare ; Case/ Case study ; Indonesia ; Mexico ; Developing countries
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CDP Background Paper, 15. Climate change vulnerability and the identification of least developed countries
This paper reviews the role of climate change vulnerability in identifying least developed countries (LDCs). Taking a sustainable development perspective, it argues that climate change should be seen as an aggravating factor of existing handicaps and many indicators used to identify LDCs already capture relevant structural vulnerabilities to climate change. However, the paper proposes some refinements in the LDC criteria to better capture vulnerabilities from natural disasters and in coastal areas. These refinements affected the vulnerability ranking in the recent triennial review, but had no ...
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Available online: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/cdp/cdp_background_papers/bp2012_15 [...]
Published by: United Nations ; 2012
This paper reviews the role of climate change vulnerability in identifying least developed countries (LDCs). Taking a sustainable development perspective, it argues that climate change should be seen as an aggravating factor of existing handicaps and many indicators used to identify LDCs already capture relevant structural vulnerabilities to climate change. However, the paper proposes some refinements in the LDC criteria to better capture vulnerabilities from natural disasters and in coastal areas. These refinements affected the vulnerability ranking in the recent triennial review, but had no impact the eligibility of countries for inclusion in and graduation from the LDC category
Collection(s) and Series: CDP Background Paper- No. 15
Language(s): English
Format: Digital (Free)Tags: Climate ; Climate change ; Vulnerability ; Least Developed Countries ; ST/ESA/2012/CDP/15
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Rainfall variability, occupational choice, and welfare in rural Bangladesh
This study investigates the choice of occupational focus versus diversification between household members in rural Bangladesh as an autonomous and proactive adaptation strategy against ex ante local rainfall variability risks. The analysis combines nationally representative household level survey data with historical climate variability information at the Upazila level. The authors note that flood prone Upazilas may face reduced risks from local rainfall variability as compared with non-flood prone Upazilas. They find that two members of the same household are less likely to be self-employed i ...
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Available online: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/07/1 [...]
Published by: World Bank ; 2012
This study investigates the choice of occupational focus versus diversification between household members in rural Bangladesh as an autonomous and proactive adaptation strategy against ex ante local rainfall variability risks. The analysis combines nationally representative household level survey data with historical climate variability information at the Upazila level. The authors note that flood prone Upazilas may face reduced risks from local rainfall variability as compared with non-flood prone Upazilas. They find that two members of the same household are less likely to be self-employed in agriculture if they live in an area with high local rainfall variability. However, the occupational diversification strategy comes at a cost to households in terms of consumption welfare. The paper considers the effects of three policy actions, providing access to credit, safety net, and market. Access to market appears to be more effective in reducing the likelihood of costly within-household occupational diversification as an ex ante climate risk-reducing strategy as compared with access to credit and safety net.
Language(s): English
Format: Digital (Free), Hard copyTags: Climate ; Climate change ; Precipitation ; Climatic variation ; Social aspects ; Food Safety ; Agroclimatology ; Bangladesh
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Too little too late: Welfare impacts of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia
The authors use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impact of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia. In particular, they consider two shocks: (i) a delay in the onset of monsoon and (ii) a significant shortfall in the amount of rain in the 90 day post-onset period. Focusing on households with family farm businesses, the analysis finds that a delay in the monsoon onset does not have a significant impact on the welfare of rice farmers. However, rice farm households located in areas exposed to low rainfall following the monsoon are negatively affected. Rice farm households appear to ...
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Available online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/667641468049853932/Too-little-too-late [...]
Published by: World Bank ; 2011
The authors use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impact of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia. In particular, they consider two shocks: (i) a delay in the onset of monsoon and (ii) a significant shortfall in the amount of rain in the 90 day post-onset period. Focusing on households with family farm businesses, the analysis finds that a delay in the monsoon onset does not have a significant impact on the welfare of rice farmers. However, rice farm households located in areas exposed to low rainfall following the monsoon are negatively affected. Rice farm households appear to be able to protect their food expenditure in the face of weather shocks at the expense of lower nonfood expenditures per capita. The authors use propensity score matching to identify community programs that might moderate the welfare impact of this type of shock. Access to credit and public works projects in communities were among the programs with the strongest moderating effects.
This is an important consideration for the design and implementation of adaptation strategies.Language(s): English
Format: Digital (Free)Tags: Poverty and Poverty reduction ; Heavy rain ; Monsoon ; Social protection and welfare ; Agricultural environment ; Region V - South-West Pacific ; Indonesia
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The poverty impacts of climate change : a review of the evidence
Climate change is believed to represent a serious challenge to poverty reduction efforts around the globe. This paper conducts an up-to-date review of three main strands of the literature analyzing the poverty impacts of climate change : (i) economy-wide growth models incorporating climate change impacts to work out consistent scenarios for how climate change might affect the path of poverty over the next decades; (ii) studies focusing on the poverty impacts of climate change in the agricultural sector; and (iii) studies exploring how past climate variability impacts poverty. The analysis find ...
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Available online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/712691468042044435/The-poverty-impacts [...]
Published by: World Bank ; 2011
Climate change is believed to represent a serious challenge to poverty reduction efforts around the globe. This paper conducts an up-to-date review of three main strands of the literature analyzing the poverty impacts of climate change : (i) economy-wide growth models incorporating climate change impacts to work out consistent scenarios for how climate change might affect the path of poverty over the next decades; (ii) studies focusing on the poverty impacts of climate change in the agricultural sector; and (iii) studies exploring how past climate variability impacts poverty. The analysis finds that the majority of the estimates of the poverty impacts tend to ignore the effect of aggregate economic growth on poverty and household welfare. The empirical evidence available to date suggests that climate change will slow the pace of global poverty reduction, but the expected poverty impact will be relatively modest and far from reversing the major decline in poverty that is expected to occur over the next 40 years as a result of continued economic growth. The studies focusing on the sector-specific channels of impacts of climate change suggest that the estimated impacts of climate change on agricultural yields are generally a poor predictor of the poverty impacts of climate change at the national level due to heterogeneity in the ability of households to adapt. It also appears that the impacts of climate change are generally regressive, that is, they fall more heavily on the poor than the rich.
Language(s): English
Format: Digital (Free)Tags: Environment and landscape ; Poverty and Poverty reduction ; Climate change ; Climate ; Social protection and welfare ; Social and Economic development
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Weather and child health in rural Nigeria
The effect of weather shocks on children's anthropometrics is investigated using the two most recent rounds of the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. For this purpose, climate data for each survey cluster are interpolated using daily weather-station records from the national network. The findings reveal that rainfall shocks have a statistically significant and robust impact on child health in the short run for both weight-for-height and height-for-age, and the incidence of diarrhea. The impacts of weather shocks on health are of considerable magnitude; however, children seem to catch up wi ...
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