Economic vulnerability to tropical storms on the southeastern coast of Africa

Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Economic vulnerability to tropical storms on the southeastern coast of Africa
 
Creator Molua, Ernest L. Mendelsohn, Robert O. Akamin, Ajapnwa
 
Subject environmental economics; climate change; development climate change; tropical storms; vulnerability; damage costs; South-Eastern Africa
Description 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.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2020-10-19
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Quantitative/ Empirical
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jamba.v12i1.676
 
Source Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies; Vol 12, No 1 (2020); 14 pages 1996-1421 2072-845X
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/676/1741 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/676/1740 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/676/1742 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/676/1739 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/downloadSuppFile/676/1322
 
Coverage South-Eastern Africa — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2020 Ernest L. Molua, Ajapnwa Akamin, Robert O. Mendelsohn https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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