The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Shocks in Uruguay

Uruguay is an economy that is vulnerable to precipitation patterns, as evidenced during the country’s historic 2022/23 drought. Yet, and despite its rich macroeconomic and climate data environment, the country does not have a consistent macroeconomic model to address the aggregate impact of climate shocks, let alone the expected additional impact from climate change. This paper intends to fill this gap by integrating climate shocks into the World Bank’s Macro-Fiscal Model, its workhorse structural macroeconomic projection model. Building on existing country studies on the sectoral effects of droughts and floods, the analysis finds that the volatility of a simulated Uruguayan economy only subject to historical climate shocks reaches 22 percent of the historical volatility of gross domestic product. Moreover, as climate shocks are only one of many shocks that can simultaneously affect an economy, incorporating exogenous macroeconomic shocks into historical climate shocks exacerbates volatility and increases potential losses. Gross domestic product can fall by 2.3 percent under a combined negative climate and macroeconomic shock of the type witnessed once every six years on average, and 4.1 percent under a once-in-40-years combined negative shock. Climate change compounds these effects going forward, worsening the magnitude of the downside risks from droughts by between 18 and 30 percent, although estimates incorporating climate change are subject to large uncertainty. The order of magnitude of these effects calls for a more systematic consideration of climate shocks in macroeconomic projections and fiscal risk assessments for Uruguay.