Person:
Hallegatte, Stéphane

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Fields of Specialization
Green growth, Climate change, Urban development
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Last updated September 13, 2023
Biography
Stéphane Hallegatte is a Senior Climate Change Adviser at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 2012 after 10 years of academic research in environmental economics and climate science for Météo-France, the Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement, and Stanford University. His research interests include the economics of natural disasters and risk management, climate change adaptation, urban policy and economics, climate change mitigation, and green growth. Mr. Hallegatte was a lead author of the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the author of dozens of articles published in international journals in multiple disciplines and of several books, including Green Economy and the Crisis: 30 Proposals for a More Sustainable France , Risk Management: Lessons from the Storm Xynthia , and Natural Disasters and Climate Change: An Economic Perspective . He also co-led the World Bank reports Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development , published in 2012 and Decarbonizing Development in 2015, and was member of the core writing team of the 2014 World Development Report Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risks for Development . Most recently, he led the World Bank reports Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty , Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters , and Lifelines: the Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity. He was the team leader for the World Bank Group Climate Change Action Plan, a large internal coordination exercise to determine and explain how the Group will support countries in their implementation of the Paris Agreement. Mr. Hallegatte holds engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris) and the Ecole Nationale de la Météorologie (Toulouse), a master's degree in meteorology and climatology from the Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse) and a Ph.D in economics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris).
Citations 1895 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Rapid Urban Growth in Flood Zones: Global Evidence since 1985
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Rentschler, Jun ; Avner, Paolo ; Marconcini, Mattia ; Su, Rui ; Strano, Emanuele ; Hallegatte, Stephane ; Bernard, Louise ; Riom, Capucine
    As countries rapidly urbanize, settlements are expanding into hazardous flood zones. This study provides a global analysis of spatial urbanization patterns and the evolution of flood exposure between 1985 and 2015. Using high-resolution annual data, it shows that settlements across the world grew by 85 percent to over 1.28 million square kilometers. In the same period, settlements exposed to the highest flood hazard level increased by 122 percent. In many regions, risky growth is outpacing safe growth, particularly in East Asia, where high-risk settlements have expanded 60 percent faster than safe ones. Developing countries are driving the recent growth of flood exposure: 36,500 square kilometers of settlements were built in the world’s highest-risk zones since 1985–82 percent of which are in low- and middle-income countries. In comparison, recent growth in high-income countries has been relatively slow and safe. These results document a divergence in countries’ exposure to flood hazards. Rather than adapting their exposure to climatic hazards, many countries are actively increasing their exposure.
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    'Building Back Better' in Practice: A Science-Policy Framework for a Green Economic Recovery after COVID-19
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01) Zachariadis, Theodoros ; Giannakis, ,Elias ; Taliotis, Constantinos ; Karmellos, Marios ; Fylaktos, Nestor ; Howells, Mark ; Blyth, Will ; Hallegatte, Stephane
    As humanity’s current production and consumption patterns exceed planetary boundaries, many opinion leaders have stressed the need to adopt green economic stimulus policies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This paper provides an integrated framework to design an economic recovery strategy aligned with sustainability objectives through a multi-criterion, multi-stakeholder lens. The aim is to enable decisions by policy makers with the aid of transparent workflows that include expert evidence that is based on quantitative open-source modeling, and qualitative input by diverse social actors in a participatory approach. The paper employs an energy systems model and an economic input-output model to provide quantitative evidence and design a multi-criteria decision process that engages stakeholders from government, enterprises, and civil society. As a case study, the paper studies 13 green recovery measures that are relevant for Cyprus and assesses their appropriateness for criteria related to environmental sustainability, socioeconomic and job impact, and climate resilience. The results highlight trade-offs between immediate and long-run effects, between economic and environmental objectives, and between expert evidence and societal priorities. Importantly, the paper finds that a “return-to-normal” economic stimulus is not only environmentally unsustainable, but also economically inferior to most green recovery schemes.
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    Revised Estimates of the Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Poverty by 2030
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09) Jafino, Bramka Arga ; Walsh, Brian ; Rozenberg, Julie ; Hallegatte, Stephane
    Thousands of scenarios are used to provide updated estimates for the impacts of climate change on extreme poverty in 2030. The range of the number of people falling into poverty due to climate change is between 32 million and 132 million in most scenarios. These results are commensurate with available estimates for the global poverty increase due to COVID-19. Socioeconomic drivers play a major role: optimistic baseline scenarios (rapid and inclusive growth with universal access to basic services in 2030) halve poverty impacts compared with the pessimistic baselines. Health impacts (malaria, diarrhea, and stunting) and the effect of food prices are responsible for most of the impact. The effect of food prices is the most important factor in Sub-Saharan Africa, while health effects, natural disasters, and food prices are all important in South Asia. These results suggest that accelerated action to boost resilience is urgent, and the COVID-19 recovery packages offer opportunities to do so.