Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T07:21:25.864Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Barren lives: drought shocks and agricultural vulnerability in the Brazilian Semi-Arid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2021

Lucas Costa ,
André Albuquerque Sant'Anna Open the ORCID record for André Albuquerque Sant'Anna [Opens in a new window]  and
Carlos Eduardo Frickmann Young Open the ORCID record for Carlos Eduardo Frickmann Young [Opens in a new window]
Lucas Costa
Affiliation:
Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
André Albuquerque Sant'Anna*
Affiliation:
Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), Brasilia, Brazil Federal Fluminense University, Department of Economics, Niterói, Brazil
Carlos Eduardo Frickmann Young
Affiliation:
Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: andre_albuquerque@id.uff.br
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of drought shocks in a vulnerable environment – the Brazilian Semi-Arid. We analyze the impact of drought shocks, measured as deviations from long-run historical averages, on agricultural outcomes in a region that suffers recurrently from drought. After controlling for municipality and year fixed effects, we use weather shocks to exactly identify outcomes. Our benchmark results show substantial effects on the loss of crop area and on the value of agricultural output, as well as on crop yields. As we investigate distributional effects, our results show that crops related to familiar agriculture suffer more from drought shocks. We follow our investigation by testing heterogeneity effects and show that adequate water provision and maintenance of forest cover help in reducing the impact of drought shocks.

Keywords

agricultural outputBrazilian Semi-Aridclimate changedrought

JEL classification

Q54: Climate • Natural Disasters and Their Management • Global Warming Q56: Environment and Development • Environment and Trade • Sustainability • Environmental Accounts and Accounting • Environmental Equity • Population Growth
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 28 , Issue 6 , December 2023 , pp. 603 - 623
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The online version of this article has been updated since original publication. A notice detailing the changes has also been published at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X21000255

References

Abadie, A, Athey, S, Imbens, GW and Wooldridge, J (2017) When should you adjust standard errors for clustering? Working Paper 24003. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amare, M, Jensen, ND, Shiferaw, B and Cissé, JD (2018) Rainfall shocks and agricultural productivity: implication for rural household consumption. Agricultural Systems 166, 79–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Assunção, J and Chein, F (2016) Climate change and agricultural productivity in Brazil: future perspectives. Environment and Development Economics 21, 581–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanc, E and Schlenker, W (2017) The use of panel models in assessments of climate impacts on agriculture. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 11, 258–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brito, SSB, Cunha, APM, Cunningham, C, Alvalá, RC, Marengo, JA and Carvalho, MA (2018) Frequency, duration and severity of drought in the semiarid northeast Brazil region. International Journal of Climatology 38, 517–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgess, R, Deschênes, O, Donaldson, D and Greenstone, M (2017) Weather, Climate Change and Death in India. Working Paper. University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Campos, JNB (2015) Paradigms and public policies on drought in northeast Brazil: a historical perspective. Environmental Management 55, 1052–1063.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cirilo, JA (2008) Public water resources policy for the semi-arid region. Estudos Avançados 22, 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cirino, PH, Féres, JG, Braga, MJ and Reis, E (2015) Assessing the impacts of ENSO-related weather effects on the Brazilian agriculture. Procedia Economics and Finance 24, 146–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, M, Knutti, R, Arblaster, J, Dufresne, J-L, Fichefet, T, Friedlingstein, P, Gao, X, Gutowski, WJ, Johns, T, Krinner, G, Shongwe, M, Tebaldi, C, Weaver, AJ, Wehner, MF, Allen, MR, Andrews, T, Beyerle, U, Bitz, CM, Bony, S and Booth, BBB (2013) Long-term climate change: projections, commitments and irreversibility. In Stocker, T (ed). Climate Change 2013:The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1029–1136.Google Scholar
Conley, TG (1999) GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence. Journal of Econometrics 92, 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, L (2019) Naturais e a Economia: análise das perdas na produção agropecuária pela seca no semiárido brasileiro. Ph.D thesis, Instituto de Economia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (in Portuguese).Google Scholar
Da Cunha, DA, Coelho, AB and Féres, JG (2015) Irrigation as an adaptive strategy to climate change: an economic perspective on Brazilian agriculture. Environment and Development Economics 20, 57–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Alcântara Silva, VM, Patrício, MCM, de A Ribeiro, VH and de Medeiros, RM (2013) O desastre seca no nordeste brasileiro. POLÊM!CA 12, 284–293 (in Portuguese).Google Scholar
De Castro, J (1946) Geografia da Fome, 1st edn. Rio de Janeiro: O Cruzeiro (in Portuguese).Google Scholar
Dell, M, Jones, BF and Olken, BA (2014) What do we learn from the weather? The new climate–economy literature. Journal of Economic Literature 52, 740–798.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Medeiros Silva, WK, de Freitas, GP, Coelho Junior, LM, de Almeida Pinto, PAL and Abrahão, R (2019) Effects of climate change on sugarcane production in the state of Paraíba (Brazil): a panel data approach (1990–2015). Climatic Change 154, 195–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deschênes, O and Greenstone, M (2007) The economic impacts of climate change: evidence from agricultural output and random fluctuations in weather. American Economic Review 97, 354–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, D, Futter, MN and Bishop, K (2012) On the forest cover–water yield debate: from demand-to supply-side thinking. Global Change Biology 18, 806–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, D, Morris, CE, Locatelli, B, Sheil, D, Cohen, J, Murdiyarso, D, Gutierrez, V, van Norordwijk, M, Creed, I, Porkorny, J, Gaveau, D, Spracklen, D, Tobella, A, Ilstedt, U, Teuling, A, Gebrehiwot, S, Sands, D, Muys, B and Sullivan, C (2017) Trees, forests and water: cool insights for a hot world. Global Environmental Change 43, 51–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furtado, C (1989) A Fantasia Desfeita. 2nd Edn, Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra (in Portuguese).Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, APA, Engle, NL, De Nys, E, Molejón, C and Martins, ES (2014) Drought preparedness in Brazil. Weather and Climate Extremes 3, 95–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsiang, S (2010) Temperatures and cyclones strongly associated with economic production in the Caribbean and Central America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, 15367–15372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hsiang, S and Kopp, RE (2018) An economist's guide to climate change science. Journal of Economic Perspectives 32, 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ilstedt, U, Tobella, AB, Bazié, HR, Bayala, J, Verbeeten, E, Nyberg, G, Sanou, J, Benegas, L, Murdiyarso, D, Laudon, H, Sheil, D and Malmer, A (2016) Intermediate tree cover can maximize groundwater recharge in the seasonally dry tropics. Scientific Reports 6, 1–12, article 21930.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lopes, AF, Macdonald, JL, Quinteiro, P, Arroja, L, Carvalho-Santos, C, Cunha-e-Sá, MA and Dias, AC (2019) Surface vs. groundwater: the effect of forest cover on the costs of drinking water. Water Resources and Economics 28, article 100123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsuura, K and Willmott, CJ (2018) Terrestrial air temperature: 1900–2017 gridded monthly time series. Available at http://climate.geog.udel.edu/Δ26climate/html_pages/download.html.Google Scholar
Medeiros, SDS, Pinto, TF, Hernan Salcedo, I, Cavalcante, ADMB, Perez Marin, AM and Tinôco, LBDM (2012) Sinopse do Censo Demográfico para o Semiárido Brasileiro. Instituto Nacional de Seminário (INSA) (in Portuguese).Google Scholar
Noack, F, Riekhof, M-C and Di Falco, S (2019) Droughts, biodiversity, and rural incomes in the tropics. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 6, 823–852.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prado, C Jr (2017) História Econômica do Brasil. São Paulo: Brasiliense (in Portuguese).Google Scholar
Rogers, TD (2010) The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sant'Anna, AA (2018) Not so natural: unequal effects of public policies on the occurrence of disasters. Ecological Economics 152, 273–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seo, SN (2011) An analysis of public adaptation to climate change using agricultural water schemes in South America. Ecological Economics 70, 825–834.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shahzad, MF and Abdulai, A (2020) Adaptation to extreme weather conditions and farm performance in rural Pakistan. Agricultural Systems 180, article 102772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taraz, V (2017) Adaptation to climate change: historical evidence from the Indian monsoon. Environment and Development Economics 22, 517–545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travassos, IS, de Souza, BI, da Silva, AB (2013) Secas, desertificação e políticas públicas no semiárido nordestino brasileiro. OKARA: Geografia em debate 7, 147–164.Google Scholar
Vieira, RMSP, Tomasella, J, Alvalá, RCS, Sestini, MF, Affonso, AG, Rodriguez, DA, Barbosa, AA, Cunha, APMA, Valles, GF, Crepani, E, de Oliveira, SBP, de Souza, MSB, Calil, PM, de Carvalho, MA, Valeriano, DM, Campello, FCB and Santana, MO (2015) Identifying areas susceptible to desertification in the Brazilian northeast. Solid Earth 6, 347–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wani, SP, Dixin, Y, Li, Z, Dar, WD and Chander, G (2012) Enhancing agricultural productivity and rural incomes through sustainable use of natural resources in the Semi Arid Tropics. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 92, 1054–1063.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Costa et al. supplementary material

Costa et al. supplementary material

Download Costa et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.4 MB