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The management of common-pool resources requires collective action and cooperation, especially when resource users face extreme weather events. This study examines collective decision-making in water resource management during droughts. By focusing on the drought response by groups of water users in river basin communities in Japan, we investigate the determinants of collective decisions on water withdrawal restrictions. Our main finding suggests that water user groups are more willing to cooperate for water conservation when other water user groups in a community also cooperate. Moreover, we examine the impact of climate variability on drought management. Our findings show that drought-related weather patterns lead to more stringent water restrictions, suggesting that climate change may pose a threat to the management of the water supply.

This study analyzes the effects of climate-related disasters on international trade in Southeast Asia. We use monthly trade data to examine the relationship between disaster shocks and exports. The empirical analysis shows that natural disasters have a significant negative effect on exports. The estimation results suggest that flooding causes immediate export losses of USD 305-557 million. In addition, we find that the effect persists in the post-disaster period, with floods causing annual export losses of USD 2.54 billion in total. We further investigate the impact of disasters by product group and show that disasters are negatively associated with the exports of agricultural and manufacturing products. The findings suggest that extreme weather events have severe repercussions on Southeast Asia, where exports play an important role in economic development.

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This study examines the effect of climate variability on water resource management during droughts. We use data from local droughts in Japan over three decades to investigate how variability in precipitation and temperature affects water restrictions implemented by drought coordination councils. We find that climate variability is significantly related to water restrictions in terms of both intensity and duration. The regression results show that a 100-mm decrease in annual precipitation is associated with a 0.2% increase in the water withdrawal restriction rate and an increase of one day in the restriction period. Our findings suggest that climate variability might induce more stringent water restrictions, implying negative consequences for water availability. This study thus shows the importance of strategically building adaptive capacity to climate change due to the risks of extreme weather events, such as prolonged droughts and extended summer seasons.