Search

The global shift of population from rural to urban areas has dramatically increased the marginal damage of air pollution emissions in urban areas. Despite a steady decline in overall emissi...

Purpose This study aims to combine information about sea level rise (SLR), the probability distribution of storm surge, a flood damage function and the value of property by elevation along the coast of selected cities to measure expected flood damage. The selected six cities all have nearby long-term tidal stations that can be used to estimate the probability distribution of floods. The model is calibrated to each city. The study then compares the cost of building higher seawalls today along the coast versus the benefit of each wall (the reduction in expected flood damage). Design/methodology/approach The combination of coastal storms and SLR has led to extensive flood damage across American cities. This study creates a simple generic model that evaluates whether seawalls would be effective at addressing this flooding problem. The paper develops an approach that readily measures the expected flood benefits and costs of alternative coastal seawalls. The approach takes account of near term SLR and the probability distribution of storm surge. The model finds seawalls are effective only in cities where many buildings are in the 25-year flood plain. Findings Cities with many buildings built on land below 2 m in elevation (the 25-year flood plain) have high expected flood damage from storms and SLR. Cities which already have many buildings in this flood plain would benefit from seawalls. Assuming seawalls are built above the high tide line, the optimal wall height that maximizes net benefits is between 0.9 to 1.2 m. These relatively low seawalls block 70%–83% of expected flood damage in these cities. Fair flood insurance is the least cost strategy for handling the remaining damages that overtop the optimal seawalls. Research limitations/implications The analysis evaluates whether or not to build a seawall the length of each city at high tide lines. However, the analysis also finds several long stretches of coast in two cities where a wall is not warranted because there are few vulnerable buildings. Future analyses should consider seawalls in more spatially detailed sections of each city. Each section could then be analyzed independently. Whether or not more complex hydrodynamic models are needed to evaluate coastal resilience planning should also be explored. Alternative solutions such as planned retreat and nature-based solutions should be compared with seawalls in future studies as well. Practical implications Cities should be careful to avoid development in the 25-year flood plain because of high expected flood damage. Cities that have low elevation areas subject to frequent flooding should consider seawalls to reduce frequent flooding. Because they are very costly and have low expected benefits, high walls that can stop a one-hundred-year storm are generally not worth building. Social implications The analysis reveals that the most important factor determining the vulnerability of cities along the eastern coastline of the USA is the number of buildings built below 2 m in elevation (the 25-year flood plain). Cities should use zoning to discourage further development in the 25-year flood plain. Cities which already have many buildings in this flood plain would benefit from city-wide seawalls. Assuming these walls are built at mean high-high tide, the optimal height of current seawalls should be relatively modest – averaging about 0.9–1.2 m above ground. Using fair insurance for the remaining risk is less expensive than building taller walls. In particular, the cost of seawalls that protect against a major hurricane surge are over three times the expected benefit and should not be built. As decades pass and observed sea level progresses, seawalls and the boundary of the 25-year flood plain should be reevaluated. Originality/value This paper develops a coastal flood model that combines SLR and the probability distribution of storm surges with the value of property by elevation to estimate the expected damage from storm surge. The model is relatively easy to calibrate making it a practical tool to guide city flood planning. The authors illustrate what insights such a model gives about coastal resilience to flooding across six cities along the Eastern US coastline.

Many studies suggest that warming is harmful to American crop yields because of a temperature threshold near 30 °C whereupon yields abruptly fall. This study uses a flexible daily temperature bin specification in a Ricardian model to measure the response of farmland value to daily temperature. The analysis does not find evidence that high temperatures are particularly harmful to farmland or cropland value in the Eastern United States. Instead, temperature has a smooth hill-shaped effect on farmland value with a peak temperature of about 18 °C. Nonetheless, the Ricardian model predicts that cropland values would fall linearly by 15%/°C with uniform warming, while farmland values of mixed farms would fall far less.

This paper develops a fine-scaled analysis in order to determine the cost and benefit of flood protection using hardened coastal structures within a large coastal segment. The probability distribution of surges and the relative rate of sea level rise are estimated from local tidal data and combined with detailed GIS data of all buildings to compute flood damage. Examining a heterogeneous suburban coastline of 110 km length (Branford, Connecticut), the paper defines a complete set of small segments along the coast between high elevation points. For each segment, the study determines whether the benefit of seawalls exceeds the cost and the optimal height for each wall. The analysis compares a uniform wall across the entire town, a uniform wall across only the low lying parts of the coastline, and a unique wall in each micro segment that maximizes net benefits. The uniform wall across the entire town fails a benefit cost analysis. By simply restricting the wall to the 30% of the coastline that is low lying, the flood benefits begin to exceed the cost of the walls. By carefully identifying just the low lying segments where the benefit exceeds the cost, the overall benefit to cost ratio can be increased to 3 to 1. The optimal flood protection program builds walls along only 10% of the coastline. These optimal micro segments are dispersed throughout the entire town including inland along a coastal river. The optimal elevation of the top of the walls is 2.3 m which is well below the 1/100 year storm height of 3.2 m. The benefit versus cost does not justify protection against rare but locally catastrophic storms such as hurricanes. Sea level rise increases the benefits of protection but plays only a small role in current protection decisions.

Climate-related costs and benefits may not be evenly distributed across the population. We study distributional implications of seasonal weather and climate on within-country inequality in rural India. Utilizing a first difference approach, we find that the poor are more sensitive to weather variations than the non-poor. The poor respond more strongly to (seasonal) temperature changes: negatively in the (warm) spring season, more positively in the (cold) rabi season. Less precipitation is harmful to the poor in the monsoon kharif season and beneficial in the winter and spring seasons. We show that adverse weather aggravates inequality by reducing consumption of the poor farming households. Future global warming predicted under RCP8.5 is likely to exacerbate these effects, reducing consumption of poor farming households by one third until the year 2100. We also find inequality in consumption across seasons with higher consumption during the harvest and lower consumption during the sowing seasons.

When choosing among emission trajectories that lead to final expected temperatures between 2 and 4 °C, society needs to weigh the extra mitigation cost of each strategy against the extra benefit (additional reduced damage). The damage associated with high emissions that lead to high temperatures play no role in this calculation. With uncertainty about the link between emissions and temperature, high temperatures can play a role in desired near term mitigation but it will generally be a modest effect. We need to focus scientific attention on policy relevant emission paths and their consequences and pay much less attention to what happens in high emission scenarios.

This study tests whether potential coastal sea walls would pass a cost benefit test given current risks of flooding. The paper combines detailed GIS property data with local scientific meas...

Deforestation from timber harvests and farmland conversions have led to 565 GtCO2 (billion tons of carbon dioxide) being emitted into the atmosphere. Taking into account natural regeneration on forestland, Houghton (2003, 2008) and Houghton et al. (2012) estimate that deforestation has caused a net loss of 484 GtCO2 since 1900 which is about one third of all manmade emissions. However, these estimates do not take into account the substantial investment into fire management, plantations, and replanting since 1950, as well as the effect of carbon fertilization on a younger forest. We compare the outcome of a deforestation scenario with subsequent forest management with what would have happened if the natural forest in 1900 had not been harvested thereafter. Deforestation plus forest management suggests current forests actually hold about 94 GtCO2 more today than they did in 1900. However, natural forests would have held an additional 186 GtCO2. Human activities on forestland have therefore caused about 92 GtCO2 of net emissions since 1900. The effect of manmade land use and land use change is relatively small compared to the 1294 GtCO2 from industrial emissions over the same time period (Marland et al., 2008).

In order to support the use of economics in environmental management, revealed preference studies continue to advance the measurement of environmental values. Together with integrated asses...

As China started to collect environmental tax on pollutant emitters, local governments were given autonomy to set tax rates that reflects regional differences to increase the policy efficiency. Previous studies have argued for efficient environmental regulations that equate the marginal damage of pollution to marginal abatement costs across space. Nevertheless, barely no study in China has estimated the source-specific marginal damages, preventing regulators from considering efficient environmental taxing regimes that exhibit spatial heterogeneity. Therefore, this paper measures the marginal health damage of air pollutant emissions from coal-fired power plants in BTH area (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, which will be referred to as BTH area in the following text) using a sophisticated integrated assessment model. The results show that marginal damages varies a great deal across space: the range between the lowest and highest emission source is $1999 to $31185 per ton for SO2, $283 to $4416 per ton for NOx and $2102 - $131886 per ton for PM2.5, respectively. The marginal damages are driven by proximity to highly populated areas and meteorological conditions, which means coal-fired power plants located in downtown areas and upwind of highly populated areas have larger marginal damages than other sources. Then based on the marginal damage estimation, the relative taxing ratios are calculated. In this way, his study provides a marginal pollution damage evaluation approach that builds the base for efficient source-specific environmental taxing regimes that reflects spatial variation.

Over half-a-million children die annually from diarrheal disease. Despite the availability and known benefits of chlorine tablets, vulnerable populations in developing countries rarely use chlorine to decontaminate their drinking water even when offered for free. We test the hypothesis that the low uptake by poor households is an information problem. The episodic nature of diarrhea makes it difficult to detect that chlorine tablets have any effect on diarrhea, so households quickly abandon using chlorine tablets after trying them. We conduct an experiment where we offer a control group and a treatment group standard information about local diarrhea incidence and the effectiveness of chlorine tablets, along with chorine tablets for free. The treatment group, however, is also given training with a diary that helps them track their children’s cases of diarrhea. The diary is used for three months before and three months after the chlorine tablets are offered. The diary allows households to learn about their household incidence of diarrhea without chlorine and then see how it changes once they start using chlorine. We then compare the rate chlorine tablets are accepted in the treatment group with a control group. Using intent-to-treat regression specifications, with and without controls for household characteristics, reveals that the treatment group consistently had much higher chlorine adoption rates than the control group. The overall presence of chlorine in household water 18 months after chlorine was first offered was 86% in the treatment group but only 29% in the control group. Consistent with this finding, the children in the treatment group were significantly taller and weighed more than the control group children. Our study suggests that the medical diary can be an effective way to convince poor households of the effectiveness of chlorine tablets and therefore dramatically increase adoption rates. Widespread use of the diary is a cost-effective way to increase global chlorine adoption and help lower diarrhea deaths and illnesses of children worldwide. Moreover, medical diaries like ours may also increase adoption rates of other cost-effective health measures that suffer from low adoption rates.

Emissions from greenhouse gases are predicted to cause climate to change. Increased solar radiation gradually warms the oceans, which leads to warmer climates. How much future climates will change depends on the cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases, which in turn depends on the magnitude of future economic growth. The global warming caused by humanmade emissions will likely affect many phenomena across the planet. The future damage from climate change is the net damage that these changes will cause to mankind. Oceans are expected to expand with warmer temperatures, and glaciers and ice sheets are expected to melt, leading to sea level rise over time (a damage). Crops tend to have a hill-shaped relationship with temperature, implying that some farms will be hurt by warming and some farms will gain, depending on their initial temperature. Cooling expenditures are expected to increase (a damage), whereas heating expenditures are expected to fall (a benefit). Water is likely to become scarcer as the demand for water increases with temperature (a damage). Warming is expected to cause ecosystems to migrate poleward. Carbon fertilization is expected to cause forest ecosystems to become more productive, but forest fires are expected to be more frequent so that it is uncertain whether forest biomass will increase or decrease. The expected net effect of all these forest changes is an increase in timber supply (a benefit). It is not known how ecosystem changes will alter overall enjoyment of ecosystems. Warmer summer temperatures will cause health effects from heat waves (a damage), but even larger reductions in health effects from winter cold (a benefit). Large tropical cyclones are expected to get stronger, which will cause more damage from floods and high winds. Winter recreation based on snow will be harmed, but summer outdoor recreation will enjoy a longer season, leading to a net benefit. The net effect of historic climate change over the last century has been beneficial. The beneficial effects of climate change have outweighed the harmful effects across the planet. However, the effects have not been evenly distributed across the planet, with more benefits in the mid to high latitudes and more damage in the low latitudes. The net effect of future climate is expected to turn harmful as benefits will shrink and damages will become more pervasive. A large proportion of the damage from climate change will happen in the low latitudes, where temperatures will be the highest. Measurements of the economic impact of climate change have changed over time. Early studies focused only on the harmful consequences of climate change. Including climate effects that are beneficial has reduced net damage. Early studies assumed no adaptation to climate change. Including adaptation has reduced the net harm from climate change. Catastrophe has been assumed to be a major motivation to do near-term mitigation. However, massive sea level rise, ecosystem collapse, and high climate sensitivity are all slow-moving phenomena that take many centuries to unfold, suggesting a modest present value.

It is well known that seawalls are effective at stopping common storm surges in urban areas. This paper examines whether seawalls should be built to withstand the storm surge from a major tropical cyclone. We estimate the extra cost of building the wall tall enough to stop such surges and the extra flood benefit of this additional height. We estimate the surge probability distribution from six tidal stations spread along the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. We then measure how valuable the vulnerable buildings behind a 100 m wall must be to justify such a tall wall at each site. Combining information about the probability distribution of storm surge, the average elevation of protected buildings, and the damage rate at each building, we find that the value of protected buildings behind this 100 m wall must be in the hundreds of millions to justify the wall. We also examine the additional flood benefit and cost of protecting a km2 of land in nearby cities at each site. The density of buildings in coastal cities in the United States are generally more than an order of magnitude too low to justify seawalls this high. Seawalls are effective, but not at stopping the surge damage from major tropical cyclones.

Climate change will hit Africa economically hard, not least Southeast Africa. Understanding the impact of extreme climatic events is important for both economic development and climate change policy. Global climatological summaries reveal high damage potential pathways for developed countries. Will countries in Africa, especially in the southeastern board of the continent, be vulnerable to loss-generating extreme climate events? This study examined for countries in the sub-region, their vulnerability and damage costs, the impact of climate change on tropical storm damage, as well as the differential impacts of storm damages. An approach using a combination of physical and economic reasoning, as well as results of previous studies, reveals that in Southeast Africa, the economic response to the key damage parameters of intensity, size and wind speed is significant for all the countries. Damages in Kenya and Tanzania are sensitive to wind speed. Both vulnerability and adaptation are important for Madagascar and Mozambique - two countries predicted to be persistently damaged by tropical storms. For Mauritius and South Africa, inflictions from extreme events are expected to be impactful, and would require resilient public and private infrastructure. Reducing the physical and socio-economic vulnerability to extreme events will require addressing the underlying socio-economic drivers, as well as developing critical public infrastructure.

Asia has built 90% of new coal-fired capacity worldwide in the past 20 years, attracting billions of dollars of foreign investment. This paper explores how such foreign investment has affected the environmental performance of a set of 2108 Asian coal power plants. The findings suggest that foreign-funded power plants are on average 3.4% cleaner in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions intensity than their domestically funded counterparts, with an effect that varies by foreign country, from 8.9% cleaner (South Korea) to 2.0% dirtier (Russia). Better technology (heat rate) explains 96% of this improved environmental performance, while cleaner coal (emission factor) explains the remaining 4%. The environmental performance of foreign-funded coal power plants has only a negligible spillover effect on the performance of domestically funded plants. Although foreign investment slightly reduces CO2 emissions per unit of electricity, overall, it increases global reliance on coal, thus undermining global ambitions to curb greenhouse gases.

Although most global forest economic studies have found that warming is likely to increase forest supply, these studies have examined only the limited warming expected through 2100. This study extends the analysis out to 2250 to test much higher levels of warming to examine very long term effects. Future warming is predicted to steadily increase forest productivity, with global timber supply predicted to increase through 2250, even with warming up to 11 °C warming. However, natural forestland and biomass will shrink. This result suggests far future forests will not be able to hold the same stock of carbon they hold today.

This article examines methods for measuring climate adaptation and discusses the empirical evidence. The primary methods for measuring climate adaptation are cross-sectional analysis, simul...

This article examines the methodological issues associated with using cross-sectional methods to study climate impacts on agriculture. In particular, we describe and address concerns that h...

There is ample evidence that canal systems often fail to reach their design capacity. This study argues that inefficient allocation of water within canals is one cause. This study collects precise measures of farm-level water withdrawals using flow meters in a canal in Pakistan. These data reveal that farmers near the head of the canal get more canal water than farmers near the tail, even accounting for conveyance efficiency. The results suggest that improvements in canal water management would yield efficiency gains for the canal.

The success of the green revolution has prompted some analysts to suggest it can be extended more broadly to all poor farmers. This paper argues that suitable natural endowments are an important precondition for high input farming. Examining production functions across China, we find that outcomes are very climate sensitive. It follows that we also find that input demand functions are climate sensitive. Efforts to intensify farming in undeveloped regions should focus on places with suitable soils and especially climate. The results also suggest that farmers will partially adapt to climate change by altering their input intensity.

Integrated assessment models increasingly rely on biomass for energy with ever more stringent mitigation policies. The stringency of mitigation will therefore have large effects on land use. As discussed in the literature, crop bio-energy will lead to substantial pressure to increase deforestation. This paper consequently explores using woody biomass for bioenergy. The paper combines the IAM WITCH with a global dynamic forestry model GTM to determine the optimal size of the woody biomass market, the effects on the timber market, and the resulting forestland under two alternative mitigation strategies. This paper predicts that moving from a moderate to a stringent mitigation policy would increase the demand for woody biomass from 3.7 to 5.2 billion m3/yr, increasing forestland by 1049 to 1890 million ha, and shrinking farmland by 748 to 1550 million ha. The stringency of mitigation will therefore have large effects on land use.

Although it is well known that climate change will alter future tropical cyclone characteristics, there have been relatively few studies that have measured global impacts. This paper utilizes new insights about the damage caused by tropical cyclones from Bakkensen and Mendelsohn (J Assoc Env Res Econ 3:555–587, 2016) to update the original methodology of Mendelsohn et al. (Nat Clim Change 2:205–209, 2012). We find that future cyclone losses are very sensitive to both adaptation and development. Future development (higher income) is predicted to sharply reduce future fatalities. However, damage may take two distinct paths. If countries follow the United States and adapt very little, damage is predicted to increase proportionally with income, rising 400% over the century. However, if development follows the remaining OECD countries, which have done a lot of adaptation, future cyclone damage will only increase slightly.

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of climate change on global and regional forests from now through 2200. By integrating the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios with climate models, a vegetation model, socio-economic scenarios, and a forest economic model, the study explores long run adjustments of both ecosystems and markets to climate change that have not been studied before. The ecological model suggests that global forest productivity increases under RCP 8.5. The overall supply of timber expands faster than demand through the 23rd century lowering timber prices and creating net benefits in the timber sector. Consumers benefit the most from the lower prices but these same low prices tend to damage forest owners, especially in the tropics. Even without a formal sequestration policy, average global forest carbon is projected to increase by 6%–8% by 2100. Under the RCP 2.6, forest carbon remains stable through 2200 but under RCP 8.5 it is simulated to increase by another 8% with a very heterogeneous distribution across world regions. Under both RCPs, global forest area is projected to increase relative to a no-climate change case until 2150, but possibly decline thereafter., Environmental Research Letters, 16 (1), ISSN:1748-9326, ISSN:1748-9318