doi:https://doi.org/10.1596/41502

Person:
Lotsch, Alexander

Last updated: May 8, 2024

Biography

Alexander Lotsch is a senior climate finance specialist with the World Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice, where he shapes strategic engagement on climate finance, climate analytics, and food system transformation. Previously, he led work on nature-based solutions, forests, and land use for the World Bank’s Climate Change Group and—while based in Hanoi, Viet Nam—he led the World Bank Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy Global Practice’s engagement on innovative jurisdiction-wide programs to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. His earlier work for the World Bank focused on the economics of adaptation, climate risk management, agricultural weather insurance, and decision-making under climate uncertainty. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2004, he worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (United States) and the Environmental Systems Research Institute. He holds a PhD in earth system science and an MA in geography from Boston University, and undergraduate degrees in physical geography from Free University Berlin and in agricultural sciences from Humboldt University Berlin.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-20) Sutton, William R.; Lotsch, Alexander; Prasann, Ashesh
The global agrifood system has been largely overlooked in the fight against climate change. Yet, greenhouse gas emissions from the agrifood system are so big that they alone could cause the world to miss the goal of keeping global average temperatures from rising above 1.5 centigrade compared to preindustrial levels. Greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood must be cut to net zero by 2050 to achieve this goal. Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System offers the first comprehensive global strategic framework to mitigate the agrifood system’s contributions to climate change, detailing affordable and readily available measures that can cut nearly a third of the world’s planet heating emissions while ensuring global food security. These actions, which are urgently needed, offer three additional benefits: improving food supply reliability, strengthening the global food system’s resilience to climate change, and safeguarding vulnerable populations. This practical guide outlines global actions and specific steps that countries at all income levels can take starting now, focusing on six key areas: investments, incentives, information, innovation, institutions, and inclusion. Calling for collaboration among governments, businesses, citizens, and international organizations, it maps a pathway to making agrifood a significant contributor to addressing climate change and healing the planet.
Ensuring Robust Flood Risk Management in Ho Chi Minh City
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Lempert, Robert; Kalra, Nidhi; Peyraud, Suzanne; Mao, Zhimin; Tan, Sinh Bach; Cira, Dean; Lotsch, Alexander
Ho Chi Minh City faces significant and growing flood risk. Recent risk reduction efforts may be insufficient as climate and socio-economic conditions diverge from projections made when those efforts were initially planned. This study demonstrates how robust decision making can help Ho Chi Minh City develop integrated flood risk management strategies in the face of such deep uncertainty. Robust decision making is an iterative, quantitative, decision support methodology designed to help policy makers identify strategies that are robust, that is, satisfying decision makers' objectives in many plausible futures, rather than being optimal in any single estimate of the future. This project used robust decision making to analyze flood risk management in Ho Chi Minh City's Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe canal catchment area. It found that the soon-to-be-completed infrastructure may reduce risk in best estimates of future conditions, but it may not keep risk low in many other plausible futures. Thus, the infrastructure may not be sufficiently robust. The analysis further suggests that adaptation and retreat measures, particularly when used adaptively, can play an important role in reducing this risk. The study examines the conditions under which robust decision making concepts and full robust decision making analyses may prove useful in developing countries. It finds that planning efforts in developing countries should at minimum use models and data to evaluate their decisions under a wide range of conditions. Full robust decision making analyses can also augment existing planning efforts in numerous ways.
Assessing the Financial Vulnerability to Climate-Related Natural Hazards
(2010-03-01) Mechler, Reinhard; Hochrainer, Stefan; Pflug, Georg; Lotsch, Alexander; Williges, Keith
National governments are key actors in managing the impacts of extreme weather events, yet many highly exposed developing countries -- faced with exhausted tax bases, high levels of indebtedness, and limited donor assistance -- have been unable to raise sufficient and timely capital to replace or repair damaged infrastructure and restore livelihoods after major disasters. Such financial vulnerability hampers development and exacerbates poverty. Based on the record of the past 30 years, this paper finds many developing countries, in particular small island states, to be highly financially vulnerable, and experiencing a resource gap (net disaster losses exceed all available financing sources) for events that occur with a probability of 2 percent or higher. This has three main implications. First, efforts to reduce risk need to be ramped-up to lessen the serious human and financial burdens. Second, contrary to the well-known Arrow-Lind theorem, there is a case for country risk aversion implying that disaster risks faced by some governments cannot be absorbed without major difficulty. Risk aversion entails the ex ante financing of losses and relief expenditure through calamity funds, regional insurance pools, or contingent credit arrangements. Third, financially vulnerable (and generally poor) countries are unlikely to be able to implement pre-disaster risk financing instruments themselves, and thus require technical and financial assistance from the donor community. The cost estimates of financial vulnerability -- based on today's climate -- inform the design of "climate insurance funds" to absorb high levels of sovereign risk and are found to be in the lower billions of dollars annually, which represents a baseline for the incremental costs arising from future climate change.
Assessment of Innovative Approaches for Flood Risk Management and Financing in Agriculture
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-01) Lotsch, Alexander; Dick, William; Manuamorn, Ornsaran Pomme
Floods are a major source of risk for the agricultural sector. Flood risk in the agricultural sector primarily arises from river flooding, flash floods, and coastal flooding. The impacts of floods can result in sizable agricultural damages at the local level. Floods in agricultural zones expose agricultural producers, agricultural supply chains, rural financial institutions (such as agricultural banks), and governments to financial risks due to the loss of crops, delinquency on seasonal production loans, damage to infrastructure and loss of public revenues. The costs associated with these damages are often absorbed by households directly or governments that provide compensation to agricultural producers in the aftermath of catastrophic flood events. Rural financial institutions also absorb the cost of floods through loan rescheduling or, in catastrophic cases, loan cancellation. In many developing countries, floods are dealt with in a reactive, rather than proactive, manner and little is done to be financially prepared for a catastrophic outcome of floods. Going forward, government and donors can play an important role to facilitate the development of risk spreading mechanisms in general and agricultural flood insurance in particular. First, this includes investment in the generation of public goods to support disaster risk reduction and recovery, risk management, and ultimately insurance applications. Second, awareness building and risk education are essential for better risk management and insurance. In that vein, identifying and assessing flood risk is critical first steps. Third, many of the technologies described here have applications beyond insurance, including for better planning, risk reduction, early warning, and disaster response. Insurance can complement such activities, but is only viable if carried out jointly as part of a broader risk management framework. Fourth, more research and technical assistance is needed to develop simple and financially viable products for flood risk transfer at aggregate levels; there is increasing demand expressed for such products from flood-prone countries. Finally, donors and government can support international and regional centers involved in flood modeling and facilitate a platform that convenes the technical expertise required for flood risk insurance development. Several of such centers and core expertises were identified through this work.
Mainstreaming Climate Adaptation into Development Assistance in Mozambique : Institutional Barriers and Opportunities
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09) Sietz, Diana; Boschütz, Maria; Klein, Richard J.T.; Lotsch, Alexander
Based on a literature review and expert interviews, this paper analyzes the most important climate impacts on development goals and explores relevant institutions in the context of mainstreaming climate adaptation into development assistance in Mozambique. Climate variability and change can significantly hinder progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals and poverty aggravates the country's climate vulnerability. Because Mozambique is one of the major recipients of official development assistance in the world, there is a clear interest in ensuring that the risks of climate impacts are incorporated into the country's development investments. A screening of donor activities at the sub-national level shows that a high share of development assistance is invested in climate-sensitive sectors, partly in areas that are particularly exposed to droughts, floods, and cyclones. The authors find that Mozambique has a supportive legislative environment and donors have a high awareness of climate risks. However, limited individual, organizational, networking, and financial capacity constrain mainstreaming initiatives. Given strong limitations at the national level, bilateral and multilateral donors can play a key role in fostering institutional capacity in Mozambique.
Assessing the Financial Vulnerability to Climate-Related Natural Hazards
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010) Mechler, Reinhard; Hochrainer, Stefan; Pflug, Georg; Lotsch, Alexander; Williges, Keith
There is increased concern about the rising costs from weather extremes. For financially vulnerable countries, there are three main implications: (i) efforts to reduce risk need to be seriously stepped up in order to reduce the serious human and financial burdens to the affected population, business and fiscal stance; (ii) there is a case for country risk aversion implying that disaster risks faced by some governments cannot be absorbed without major difficulty; (iii) without exception, all financially vulnerable countries due to their development status are very unlikely to be able to implement pre-disaster risk financing instruments themselves. In order to reduce their financial vulnerability by their own means, they require technical and financial assistance from the donor community.
HIV/AIDS, Climate Change and Disaster Management : Challenges for Institutions in Malawi
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-05) Suarez, Pablo; Givah, Precious; Storey, Kelvin; Lotsch, Alexander
Southern African institutions involved in disaster management face two major new threats: the HIV/AIDS pandemic (eroding organizational capacity and increasing vulnerability of the population), and climate change (higher risk of extreme events and disasters). Analyzing the combined effects of these two threats on six disaster-related institutions in Malawi, the authors find evidence of a growing gap between demand for their services and capacity to satisfy that demand. HIV/AIDS leads to staff attrition, high vacancy rates, absenteeism, increased workload and other negative effects enhanced by human resources policies and financial limitations. Many necessary tasks cannot be carried out adequately with constraints such as the 42 percent vacancy rate in the Department of Poverty and Disaster Management Affairs, or the reduction of rainfall stations operated by the Meteorological Service from over 800 in 1988 to just 135 in 2006. The authors highlight implications of declining organizational capacity for climate change adaptation, and formulate recommendations.
Sensitivity of Cropping Patterns in Africa to Transient Climate Change
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-07) Lotsch, Alexander
The detailed analysis of current cropping areas in Africa presented here reveals significant climate sensitivities of cropland density and distribution across a variety of agro-ecosystems. Based on empirical climate-cropland relationships, cropland density responds positively to increases in precipitation in semi-arid and arid zones of the sub-tropics and warmer temperatures in higher elevations. As a result, marginal increases in seasonal precipitation lead to denser cropping areas in arid and semi-arid regions. Warmer temperatures, on the other hand, tend to decrease the probability of cropping in most parts of Africa (the opposite is true for increases in rainfall and decreases in temperatures relative to current conditions). Despite discrepancies and uncertainties in climate model output, the analysis suggests that cropland area in Africa is likely to decrease significantly in response to transient changes in climate. The continent is expected to have lost on average 4.1 percent of its cropland by 2039, and 18.4 percent is likely to have disappeared by the end of the century. In some regions of Africa the losses in cropland area are likely to occur at a much faster rate, with northern and eastern Africa losing up to 15 percent of their current cropland area within the next 30 years or so. Gains in cropland area in western and southern Africa due to projected increases in precipitation during the earlier portions of the century will be offset by losses later on. In conjunction with existing challenges in the agricultural sector in Africa, these findings demand sound policies to manage existing agricultural lands and the productivity of cropping systems.