This study examines whether receiving anticipatory cash transfers during an extreme winter affects households’ demand for index-based livestock insurance. We exploit a randomized field experiment conducted during the 2020/21 winter disaster in western Mongolia and combine household panel...

This report provides a comprehensive review of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) financing in India, with the aim of informing the deliberations of the Sixteenth Finance Commission (SFC). India's geographic and climatic diversity makes effective DRM financing critical to safeguarding communities,...

According to administrative data, as many as 25 million children between the ages of 5 and 16 are out-of-school in Pakistan. However, little is known about where these children are in relation to available public and private schooling options. This paper brings together novel data from satellite...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) can help countries facing complex climate-related challenges to address disaster risks while providing important socioeconomic benefits. This guide focuses on NBS for climate resilience and disaster risk reduction (DRR). As such, traditional conservation and...

The reconstruction of Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) in Sint Maarten represents one of the most comprehensive airport disaster recovery efforts in recent history. When Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the terminal in September 2017, they threatened the economic...

Chad is consistently rated among the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Increasing temperatures and precipitation are raising the threat of drought, flood, heatwaves, and vector-borne diseases. Infrastructure limitations and Chad’s young, poor, and rapidly growing...

Landslides claim more than 4,000 lives annually and lead to approximately US$20 billion in economic losses. However, landslide hazard, risk assessment, and early warning systems remain constrained by fragmented, inconsistent, and incomplete data. This study addresses the global data gap by...

This evaluation assesses the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) support to Tajikistan over 2015-2024. Tajikistan is highly vulnerable to disasters caused by natural hazards and to climate change due to its topography and limited adaptive capacity. GFDRR has approved 13...

This paper develops a tractable consumption-based asset-pricing model in an i.i.d. economy that combines rare consumption disasters with ambiguity aversion implemented as a one-period entropic tilt under CRRA utility. Closed-form expressions for the risk-free rate, equity return moments, and the...

This study examines the long-term impact of childhood exposure to Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) on adult human capital outcomes in the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region. Using historical GLOF data and geospatial mapping of downstream flood pathways, we identify treatment and control groups...

This paper examines the short-term macroeconomic and sectoral effects of extreme weather events in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. We construct novel indicators of extreme temperature and precipitation based on percentile thresholds of long-run historical distributions and estimate their...

In the past two decades, about half of the new homes in the United States were built in areas at risk of natural hazards. Why is residential development exposed to such risk? I argue that regulated property-insurance pricing and land-use regulations contribute to this pattern. I study this...

This paper examines the role of insurance in mitigating the adverse macroeconomic effects of climate-related catastrophes. We first develop a stylised theoretical growth model which incorporates a role for natural catastrophes, climate change and insurance. This illustrates how insurance can...

Background: Natural disasters can trigger hazardous material (Hazmat) releases and damage valuable assets, increasing human, environmental, and economic losses. Effective predisaster relocation planning is therefore critical but operationally challenging. Methods: This study develops a...

This report presents a strong economic case for investing in disaster and emergency preparedness. Specifically, this report aims to help policymakers identify and prioritize the most urgent and cost-effective opportunities to bolster the country’s resilience, thereby improving preparedness not...

This paper presents a physics-based hazard model for catastrophe (CAT) modelling of urban flood risk-a first step toward a complete CAT modelling framework. We introduce a linear second-order ordinary differential equation (ODE) system to simulate the underlying mechanisms of water accumulation,...

This paper examines the impact of floods on regional import dynamics in South Africa. Floods can disrupt firms' production activities and thereby hinder their participation in import markets. At the same time, firms may increase imports to compensate for disruptions in domestic supply networks....

We study how physical climate risk shapes bank lending activity and credit quality by combining high-resolution Copernicus flood geospatial maps with loan-level AnaCredit data. We exploit four major European floods (2021-2024) in a spatial regression discontinuity design comparing firms located...

Climate-related and other natural disasters, such as droughts and floods, have a significant impact on agricultural producers and pose substantial risks and costs to agricultural lenders. This study aims to assess how FIs with a sizable agricultural loan portfolio manage credit risk arising from...

In 2022, Pakistan was hit by severe floods that affected approximately 33 million people and caused extensive damage to infrastructure and homes. Post-flood analysis indicates that while the Government of Pakistan was able to respond using multiple instruments, the coverage of relief support...

This study focuses on six countries in the Central Asia and South Caucasus (CA & SC) regions: Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Their inclusion reflects both the World Bank’s strategic engagement in the region and growing government interest in...

Environmental challenges increasingly shape political discourses across Europe, yet their influence on actual environmental governance remains unclear. This paper examines the political economy mechanisms linking environmental change, party platforms, and the decentralisation of environmental...

Natural hazards are an increasing concern, placing disaster preparedness and mitigation at the forefront of policy agendas. In this context, Italy’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) has allocated €3 billion for explicit disaster prevention, with a primary focus on hydrogeological risks...

Natural disasters are a growing global threat, yet their consequences for gender-based violence (GBV) in high-income countries with strong institutional protections remain largely unknown. We address this gap using administrative crime records linked to disaster declarations at the Local...

Background: The administration and management of humanitarian logistical operations are considered critical factors. The extreme and unexpected nature of events such as natural disasters poses logistical challenges to humanitarian support agencies providing aid to the affected area. These...

We examine geographic spillovers in digital credit markets by studying how natural disasters affect borrowing behavior in adjacent, physically undamaged regions. Using granular loan-level data from Indonesia's largest FinTech lender (2021-2023) and leveraging quasi-random variation in disaster...

Do earthquakes strengthen social cohesion or undermine it? While some theories suggest they strengthen social bonds, others suggest they lead to social disintegration. We add to the limited causal evidence on this phenomenon using the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake, and exploit a unique dataset...

Extreme weather events are increasingly treated as pivotal moments for climate engagement. Yet attribution does not occur in a vacuum. Extreme weather events invite multiple plausible policy-relevant culprits: the hazard as an extreme phenomenon, governance or infrastructure failures, land-use...