IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/29888.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Global maps of climate change impacts on the favourability for human habitation and economic activity

Author

Listed:
  • Füssel, Hans-Martin

Abstract

This paper analyzes the statistical relationship between climatic factors and the global distribution of population and economic activity. Building on this analysis, a new method is developed for assessing geographically explicit impacts of climate change on the suitability of regions for human habitation and economic activity. This method combines information about differences in the conditional distributions of population density and economic activity across climate categories with climate change projections from an ensemble of general circulation models. In contrast to other cross-sectional analyses of the economic impacts of climate change, the method applied here does not require specific assumptions about the functional form of the relationship between climatic and non-climatic factors on the one hand, and population density and economic activity on the other. The results indicate that climate change will improve the habitability of some scarcely populated regions, in particular in Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, northern China, Tibet, and parts of Central Asia, but it will impair the habitability of many densely populated regions in the eastern USA, southern Europe, northern and southern Africa, eastern China, and parts of Australia. Most parts of India, South-East Asia and Oceania, Central America and northern South America, the Sahara and the Sahel are projected to experience climatic conditions during this century that have no geographical analogue in the present climate. Hence, a large majority of the world’s population is living in regions whose habitability is either projected to decrease or that are projected to experience globally unprecedented climate conditions within this century under a business-as-usual emissions scenario.

Suggested Citation

  • Füssel, Hans-Martin, 2010. "Global maps of climate change impacts on the favourability for human habitation and economic activity," MPRA Paper 29888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:29888
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29888/1/MPRA_paper_29888.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mendelsohn, Robert & Nordhaus, William D & Shaw, Daigee, 1994. "The Impact of Global Warming on Agriculture: A Ricardian Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 753-771, September.
    2. Sebastian Kopf & Minh Ha-Duong & Stéphane Hallegatte, 2008. "Using Maps of City Analogues to Display and Interpret Climate Change scenarios and their uncertainty," CIRED Working Papers hal-00866436, HAL.
    3. Füssel, Hans-Martin, 2009. "New results on the influence of climate on the distribution of population and economic activity," MPRA Paper 13788, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2009. "Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 198-204, May.
    5. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    6. Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 131-165, June.
    7. Richard S.J. Tol, 2020. "The distributional impact of climate change," Working Paper Series 1220, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    8. Mendelsohn, Robert & Dinar, Ariel & Williams, Larry, 2006. "The distributional impact of climate change on rich and poor countries," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 159-178, April.
    9. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2008. "Climate Change and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," NBER Working Papers 14132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Robert Mendelsohn & Larry Williams, 2004. "Comparing Forecasts of the Global Impacts of Climate Change," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 315-333, October.
    11. Stanley L. Engerman & Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 2005. "Colonialism, Inequality, and Long-Run Paths of Development," NBER Working Papers 11057, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Füssel, Hans-Martin, 2009. "New results on the influence of climate on the distribution of population and economic activity," MPRA Paper 13788, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Valentinyi, Akos & Bluedorn, John & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2009. "The Long-Lived Effects of Historic Climate on the Wealth of Nations," CEPR Discussion Papers 7572, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Alejandro Lopez-Feldman, 2013. "Climate change, agriculture, and poverty: A household level analysis for rural Mexico," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(2), pages 1126-1139.
    4. Ng, Pin & Zhao, Xiaobing, 2011. "No matter how it is measured, income declines with global warming," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(5), pages 963-970, March.
    5. Richard S.J. Tol, 2020. "The Economic Impact of Weather and Climate," Video Library 2094, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    6. Alex Bowen & Sarah Cochrane & Samuel Fankhauser, 2012. "Climate change, adaptation and economic growth," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 113(2), pages 95-106, July.
    7. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    8. M. Idrees Khawaja & Sajawal Khan, 2009. "Reforming Institutions: Where to Begin?," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 48(3), pages 241-267.
    9. Letta, Marco & Montalbano, Pierluigi & Tol, Richard S.J., 2018. "Temperature shocks, short-term growth and poverty thresholds: Evidence from rural Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 13-32.
    10. David Castells-Quintana & Maria del Pilar Lopez-Uribe & Tom McDermott, 2015. "Climate change and the geographical and institutional drivers of economic development," GRI Working Papers 198, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    11. Naeem Akram & Abdul Hamid, 2015. "Climate change: A threat to the economic growth of Pakistan," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 15(1), pages 73-86, January.
    12. Lopez-Uribe, Maria del Pilar & Castells-Quintana, David & McDermott, Thomas K. J., 2017. "Geography, institutions and development: a review ofthe long-run impacts of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65147, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Karen Fisher-Vanden & Ian Sue Wing & Elisa Lanzi & David Popp, 2013. "Modeling climate change feedbacks and adaptation responses: recent approaches and shortcomings," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 481-495, April.
    14. Uwe Sunde, 2006. "Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung und Demokratie – Ist Demokratie ein Wohlstandsmotor oder ein Wohlstandsprodukt?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(4), pages 471-499, November.
    15. José Antonio Alonso & Carlos Garcimartín & Luis Rivas, 2011. "Taxes, Foreign Aid and Quality of Governance Institutions," Chapters, in: Mehmet Ugur & David Sunderland (ed.), Does Economic Governance Matter?, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Luis Angeles & Kyriakos C. Neanidis, "undated". "Colonialism, elite Formation and corruption," Working Papers 2011_02, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    17. José Antonio Alonso & Carlos Garcimartín, 2011. "Does Aid Hinder Tax Efforts? More Evidence," Discussion Papers 11/04, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    18. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2009. "Rent Preservation and the Persistence of Underdevelopment," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 178-218, January.
    19. Geoffrey Heal & Jisung Park, 2013. "Feeling the Heat: Temperature, Physiology & the Wealth of Nations," NBER Working Papers 19725, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. S. Niggol Seo, 2016. "The Micro-behavioral Framework for Estimating Total Damage of Global Warming on Natural Resource Enterprises with Full Adaptations," Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, Springer;The International Biometric Society;American Statistical Association, vol. 21(2), pages 328-347, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate change; macroeconomics; population; cross-sectional analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:29888. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.