Droughts and floods in Malawi: assessing the economywide effects
IFPRI discussion paper 00962:
This study estimates impacts from and identifies policy responses to extreme climate events, especially the economywide impacts of abnormal hydrometeorological events (droughts and floods-related crop production losses in Malawi), in order to design appropriate agricultural and development strategies. It provides partial biophysical impacts of flood and drought events of different severities, and further attach a statistical probability of occurrence to each event of given severity, making it a useful planning tool by adding a probability distribution to the range of possible weather events and their impacts. It also simulates drought mitigation scenarios involving more widespread adoption of drought-resistant maize varieties.
The study makes evidence of severe detrimental effects that droughts and floods have on the broader Malawian economy and the constraints they place on future economic development. Section 2 reviews the drought and flood risk models that were used in the estimation of crop-level production losses. Section 3 describes the structure of the Malawian economy and the model used. Sections 4 and 5 explain the simulations and present the results from the drought and flood scenarios. Section 6 summarizes the findings of the study.
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