Published on 5 May 2020: The Impacts of Tropical Cyclones and Fluvial Floods on Economic Growth

Hazem Krichene and colleagues publish a study on the impact of tropical cyclones and flooding on economic growth, in World Development in May 2020 (preprint). The full article can be accessed here.

The graphic depicts the country-specific vulnerability of per-capita economic growth accumulated over 15 years in the aftermath of tropical cyclones in the period 1980-2010. Box centers give estimates of accumulated growth responses with boxes spanning the standard error range. Box colors show significance at 90% level with red and green boxes showing significant negative and positive long-term impact, respectively. Non-significant results are indicated by grey boxes and greyed out country names. Growth in most countries is affected negatively by tropical cyclones in the long-term. Together with the projection that very intense tropical cyclones will become more frequent under global warming, this result could suggest that, in strongly affected “hot-spot” countries, tropical cyclones have the potential to reduce future development prospects in the absence of further adaptation measures. Importantly, we do not find lower vulnerabilities for developed countries so development alone does not seem to protect against tropical cyclone induced growth losses (reproduced from Krichene et al. 2021, World Development, 144, 105475).