Climate volatility deepens poverty vulnerability in developing countries

By S. Ahmed, N. Diffenbaugh, Thomas W. Hertel. 2009

290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Extreme climate events could influence poverty by affecting agricultural productivity and raising prices of staple foods that are important to poor households in developing countries. With the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events predicted to change in the future, informed policy design and analysis requires an understanding of which countries and groups are going to be most vulnerable to increasing poverty. Using a novel economic-climate analysis framework, we assess the poverty impacts of climate volatility for seven socio-economic groups in 16 developing countries. We find that extremes under present climate volatility increase poverty across our developing country sample—particularly in Bangladesh, Mexico, Indonesia, and Africa—with urban wage earners the most vulnerable group. We also find that global warming exacerbates poverty vulnerability in many nations.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c742b9b9cf4e29a329e996986f6b60863b595557

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Citations in the corpus

Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security in Tanzania (2012, unknown): “Since food security depends on both food availability and accessibility, it is inadequate to measure production changes without considering, for example, the impacts of climate change on households’ incomes (Parry et al., 2004; Ahmed et al., 2009).”
The role of international trade in managing food security risks from climate change (2015, background): “2012), which in turn can translate into greater vulnerability of the poor to poverty and malnutrition (Ahmed et al. 2009).”
Climate change impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean and their implications for development (2017, background): “…on steep slopes and with poor drainage systems (Douglas et al. 2008), and certain popu- lation groups [such as short-term or chronically poor peo- ple (Ahmed et al. 2009; Hardoy and Pandiella 2009; Hertel et al. 2010) and women-headed households or children (Kumar and Quisumbing 2011)] are…”
The Poverty Impacts of Climate Change: A Review of the Evidence (2011, background): “Ahmed et al. (2009) is the only study to date making an effort to model the channels and estimate the poverty impacts of extreme weather events such as extreme heat, droughts and floods.”