This paper investigates the effects of multiple weather shocks on household welfare in Mozambique, as well as some of the coping responses and price mechanisms at play.
... See More + The analysis employs a triple-difference strategy that exploits variation in the shocks across space, time, and cropping cycles. The findings demonstrate high levels of vulnerability across various weather risks. Experiencing a cyclone, flood, or drought leads to a drop of up to 25-30 percent in per capita food consumption and around 0.4 fewer meals per day per person. Poverty increased by 12 and 17.5 percentage points in two of the three events analyzed. Human capital accumulation, as measured by school participation and morbidity, is disrupted. Households follow risk-coping strategies, such as increasing the labor supply of their children or selling assets, which entail partial protection in the aftermath of the shock at the cost of lower income growth in the future. In disentangling the channels, the paper shows that maize prices exhibit higher volatility in food markets that are spatially close to the most affected areas. The results are robust to several robustness checks, including analysis of bias from selective migration, and indicate that household welfare and economic mobility in low-income environments are constrained by uninsured weather risks.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8667 DEC 06, 2018
This paper investigates the effects of multiple weather shocks on household welfare in Mozambique, as well as some of the coping responses and price mechanisms at play.
... See More + The analysis employs a triple-difference strategy that exploits variation in the shocks across space, time, and cropping cycles. The findings demonstrate high levels of vulnerability across various weather risks. Experiencing a cyclone, flood, or drought leads to a drop of up to 25-30 percent in per capita food consumption and around 0.4 fewer meals per day per person. Poverty increased by 12 and 17.5 percentage points in two of the three events analyzed. Human capital accumulation, as measured by school participation and morbidity, is disrupted. Households follow risk-coping strategies, such as increasing the labor supply of their children or selling assets, which entail partial protection in the aftermath of the shock at the cost of lower income growth in the future. In disentangling the channels, the paper shows that maize prices exhibit higher volatility in food markets that are spatially close to the most affected areas. The results are robust to several robustness checks, including analysis of bias from selective migration, and indicate that household welfare and economic mobility in low-income environments are constrained by uninsured weather risks.
See Less -
Working Paper (Numbered Series) 132800 DEC 01, 2018
The development objective of the Drought Recovery and Resilience Project for Malawi is to support the Government of Malawi to meet the immediate food security and livelihoods restoration needs of the communities affected by drought and promote recovery and resilience in key affected sectors.
... See More + The restructuring changes are to: (i) reallocate funds from project sub-component 1.2: improving livelihoods and building resilience through input distribution to sub-components 1.4: climate smart irrigation; 2.1: rehabilitation and augmenting critical water supply infrastructure; and 2.2: strengthening water resources and catchment management to enhance drought resilience and preparedness; and (ii) revise the results framework to reflect the reduced scope of the inputs for assets (IFA) program, the increased scope of the infrastructure investment, and realistic targets in sub-components of restoration and enhancement of livestock production and rehabilitation of boreholes due to increased prevailing operating cost.
See Less -
Inadequate infrastructure impedes the productivity of manufacturing firms, with negative consequences for the wider economy. This study examines how water infrastructure copes with severe weather fluctuations and analyzes the effect of unreliable water supplies on the productivity of manufacturing firms, focusing predominately on firms in developing economies.
... See More + This is achieved using firm-level data from World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering more than 16,000 manufacturing firms in a cross-section of 103 countries between 2009 and 2015. The study finds that periods of significantly low rainfall lead to higher water outages, and that the overall impact is driven by the effects of drought on low-income and lower-middle-income economies, with upper-middle-income and high-income economies benefitting from more resilient water infrastructure. Furthermore, the study finds that incidents of water outages lead to lower firm productivity for firms in less developed economies. For the average firm located in a low-income or lower-middle-income economy, one additional water outage incident per day in a typical month can lead to losses of approximately 8.2 percent of annual sales. This finding calls for increased policy focus on water infrastructure services, particularly in poorer countries where water infrastructure and firms seem to be particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of rainfall.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8637 NOV 01, 2018
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), in collaboration with the World Bank, hosted a Regional Forum on Climate Risks and Food Security Resilience at the Taj Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka Zambia on October 25 and 26, 2018.
... See More + This was followed by a Field Visit to the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Center (SPGRC), on October 27, 2018.
See Less -
The Crisis Response Window (CRW) provides additional resources to respond to major natural disasters, public health emergencies and severe economic crises, so as to help IDA countries return to their long-term development paths.
... See More + Piloted in IDA15 and officially established in IDA16, the CRW is the pièce de résistance in IDA’s crisis management toolkit. Crises pose an integral development challenge in IDA countries. The poor tends to suffer disproportionately, as they are likelier to settle in hazard-prone areas and lack the wherewithal to cope with disasters. Crises can also wreak irreversible effects on education and health that entrench the intergenerational transmission of poverty, such as by forcing households to cut healthcare expenditures or withdraw children from school. The CRW is a valuable source of funding to help countries respond to shocks.
See Less -
