Does development reduce damage risk from climate extremes? Empirical evidence for floods in India

Abstract:

Using a dataset on reported loss and damage from floods across the Indian states between 1953 and 2011, this study inquires whether development makes Indian states to become flood resilient. Although the role of disaster-specific and the generic adaptation measures in mitigating loss and damage from natural disasters have been largely researched, there are limited empirical studies in the Indian context, particularly those that conducted an analysis at the sub-national level and used a dataset of more than 50 years. Besides, this study has an advantage of exploring the causal relationship between human development and the impacts from floods. Employing zero-inflated negative binomial and fixed effects models, this study comes up with three major findings. First, an increasing trend is observed for the reported loss and damage indicators not only in India but also across the flood-affected states. Second, both human development and income indicators are found as statistically insignificant in most of the cases, indicating that the states are not becoming flood-resilient with respect to present development. Third, there is a lack of evidence of learning effect. Therefore, the paper suggests that the ongoing development strategies must take into account climate risk and address the persistent adaptation deficit. These findings could have larger policy implications since we are likely to encounter such events frequently in the upcoming decades. 

Keywords: Human Development; Income; Loss and Damage; Floods; Resilience; Indian States
 
About the Speaker:

Chandra Sekhar Bahinipati has obtained his Ph.D. (Economics) from Madras Institute of Development Studies, India, and currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati (IITT), India. His research interests include climate change economics, economics of adaptation, loss and damage, environmental economics, natural resource management and development economics. Apart from teaching principles of economics, econometrics and impact evaluation at IITT, he is currently working on two sponsored research projects: (i) Role of information, institutions and incentives in enhancing adoption of climate resilient agricultural interventions in southern Indian states, and (ii) Evidence based systematic review of adoption of agricultural interventions across the Indian states and its’ impact on environmental outcomes.