Droughts are, after floods and storms, the costliest natural hazard.
Droughts are, after floods and storms, the costliest natural hazard. The expected increase in the frequency and intensity of drought events due to climate change reinforces the necessity to improve the quality and reliability of information about the economic impacts of droughts and the need for more accurate cost analyses to embed these estimates into the assessment of the costs of climate change.
A new study realized with the contribution of the CMCC Foundation, recently published on Land Use Policy, proposes a novel method to assess the overall economic effects of agricultural droughts using a coupled agronomic-economic approach that accounts for the direct and indirect impacts of this hazard in the economy.
“Our results reveal”, commented researcher David García-León, lead author of the study, “over the period analyzed, droughts of different severity hit Italy and drought-induced economic losses ranged in Italy between 0.55 and 1.75 billion euros”.
David García-León, who was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at CMCC@Ca’Foscari Division and he’s now at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, focused his research on assessing the overall macro-economic effects (% GDP) of agricultural drought impacts in Italy using a coupled CGE-econometric approach. The other authors of the study are the CMCC researchers Gabriele Standardi and Andrea Staccione, respectively working at CMCC Divisions ECIP – Economic analysis and Climate Impacts and Policy and RAAS – Risk Assessment and Adaptation Strategies.
Read more at CMCC Foundation - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change
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