The Global Impacts of Extreme Sea-Level Rise: A Comprehensive Economic Assessment

Abstract

This paper investigates the world-wide economic cost of rapid sea-level rise of the kind that could be caused by accelerated ice flow from the West Antarctic and/or the Greenland ice sheets. Such an event would have direct impacts on economic activities located near the coastline and indirect impacts further inland. Using data from the DIVA model on sea floods, river floods, land loss, salinisation and forced migration, we analyse the effects of these damages in a computable general equilibrium model for 25 world regions. We consider three sea-level rise scenarios that correspond to 0.47, 1.12 and 1.75 m by the 2080s. By incorporating a wider range of damage categories, implemented in an economy-wide framework and including very rapid sea-level rise, the study offers a new contribution to climate change impact studies. We find that the loss of GDP worldwide is 0.5 % in the highest sea-level rise scenario, with a loss of welfare (equivalent variation) of almost 2 % world-wide. Within these aggregates, there are large regional disparities, with the Central Europe North region and parts of South-East Asia and South Asia being especially prone to high costs (welfare losses in the range of 4-12 %). The analysis assumes that there is not public adaptation, which would substantially lower the costs. In this way, the analysis demonstrates what is at risk, and could be used to justify adaptation expenses.

A CGE Framework for Modeling the Economics of Flooding and Recovery in a Major Urban Area

“…It is therefore not surprising that CGE modeling of the impacts of large disasters has become common. This began with earthquakes (Rose, 2004;Rose & Liao, 2005;Tsuchiya et al, 2007;Tatano & Tsuchiya, 2008) and has since spread to other disasters including terrorist attacks (Giesecke et al, 2012(Giesecke et al, , 2015 and flooding (Haddad & Teixeira, 2015;Jonkhoff, 2009;Pauw, Thurlow, Bachu, & Van Seventer, 2011;Pycroft, Abrell, & Ciscar, 2016).…”

Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Economic Growth in Developing Asia

“…The global impact estimate on GDP by SLR is, on average, from 0.15% to as much as 9.3% of global GDP. Pycroft, Abrell, and Ciscar (2015) even project global GDP loss of 0.5% under the highest SLR scenario, 6 with a loss of welfare (measured in equivalent variation) at 1.91% worldwide by 2100, which is equivalent to $2.82 trillion by 2100. B. Migration SLR is expected to bring significant changes in migration patterns in vulnerable areas.…”

“…B. Migration SLR is expected to bring significant changes in migration patterns in vulnerable areas. Future SLR is projected to reach 0.9 m by 2100 (IPCC 2001) to as high as 1.75 m under the high sea-level scenario in the 21st century (Pycroft, Abrell, and Ciscar 2015). According to Perch-Nielsen (2004), the impact of SLR would increase flood frequency, erosion, inundation, and rising water tables to vulnerable communities, creating risk to food security and livelihood of the population.…”

“…However, Raleigh, Jordan, and Salehyan (2008) stress that international migration might be quite limited since less developed countries lack abilities to mitigate climate change and instead try to incorporate physical and social hazards into their livelihoods as their coping mechanism (Mula 1999;Maxwell 1999;Meze-Hausken 2000;Findley 1994). Pycroft, Abrell, and Ciscar (2015) estimate the impact of migration on GDP and find that the PRC, the Republic of Korea, and Indonesia have the highest estimated total impact among the region at a combined $6 billion, or almost 10% of the world's estimates under the high scenario by 2080 (Table 2). Ericson et al (2006) estimate that there are around 8.7 million people expected to be displaced by 2050 due to rising sea levels.…”

Economy-wide effects of coastal flooding due to sea level rise: a multi-model simultaneous treatment of mitigation, adaptation, and residual impacts

“…The PESETA and PESETA II projects, for example, applied a comparativestatic CGE analysis by introducing biophysical impacts as inputs to the General Equilibrium Model for Economy -Energy-Environment (GEM-E3) for Europe (Ciscar et al 2011(Ciscar et al , 2012(Ciscar et al , 2014. Other CGE studies have focused on SLR impacts explicitly (Bosello et al 2007, 2012, Carrera et al 2015, Pycroft et al 2016. Bosello and De Cian (2014) present a thorough literature review covering the different applications and methodologies followed by CGE models for the assessment of SLR impacts, indicating the strengths and caveats of the approaches.…”