The multifaceted relationship between environmental risks and poverty: new insights from Vietnam

Abstract

Despite complex interlinkages, insights into the multifaceted relationship between environmental risks and poverty can be gained through an analysis of different risks across space, time and scale within a single context using consistent methods. Combining geo-spatial data on eight environmental risks and household survey data from 2010-2014 for the case study of Vietnam, this paper shows: (i) at district-level the incidence of poverty is higher in high risk areas, (ii) at household-level poorer households face higher environmental risks, (iii) for some risks the relationship with household-level consumption varies between rural and urban areas, and (iv) environmental risks explain consumption differences between households, but less so changes over time. While altogether these analyses cannot establish a causal relationship between environmental risks and poverty, they do indicate that Vietnam's poor are disproportionally exposed. Given growing pressures due to climate change, addressing such risks should be a focus of poverty reduction efforts.

Poverty and climate change: introduction

“…Narloch and Bangalore (2018) assess how the relationship between poverty and many dimensions of environmental risk varies as a function of the channels through which poverty and risk interact, using a set of consistent data and methods while holding constant national context. Combining high-resolution geo-spatial data on eight environmental risks (such as air pollution, land degradation and tree cover loss) and household survey data from 2010–2014, their paper shows that: (i) at the district-level, the incidence of poverty is higher in areas of high environmental risk, (ii) at the household-level, poorer households face higher environmental risks, (iii) for some risks, the relationship with household-level consumption varies between rural and urban areas, and (iv) environmental risks explain consumption differences between households, but less so changes over time.…”

Climate and poverty in Africa South of the Sahara

“…The existing literature on the impacts of weather shocks on productivity, income and consumption is highly mixed, context-specific (Schlenker et al, 2005, Baylis et al, 2011 among others), and mostly focused on vulnerability. Little evidence exists on the specific impact of different types of weather shocks on household consumption (Narloch and Bangalore, 2018, Skoufias and Vinha, 2013). In this paper, we used an empirical approach similar to Deschênes and Greenstone (2007), although instead of using panel data we take advantage of cross-sectional data across a large number of countries and we look at the effect on aggregate welfare measures instead of agricultural income.…”

Do we realize the full impact of pollinator loss on other ecosystem services and the challenges for any restoration in terrestrial areas?

“…Compensation of partial loss of ES can be costly or take a long time (Bauer & Wing ; Partap & Ya ). Increasing costs and exacerbating risks will especially aggravate the vulnerability of one third of the global population with the lowest income (Novais et al ; Narloch & Bangalore ). In rural areas, especially mountainous areas with frequent mudflows and floods, crop and income loss have high potential to cause (labor) migration of men and youth (Christmann & Aw‐Hassan ).…”