Person:
Hallegatte, Stéphane
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Green growth,
Climate change,
Urban development
Degrees
ORCID
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Externally Hosted Work
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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).
Publication Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
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Publication
Measuring Natural Risks in the Philippines: Socioeconomic Resilience and Wellbeing Losses
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)Traditional risk assessments use asset losses as the main metric to measure the severity of a disaster. This paper proposes an expanded risk assessment based on a framework that adds socioeconomic resilience and uses wellbeing losses as its main measure of disaster severity. Using a new, agent-based model that represents explicitly the recovery and reconstruction process at the household level, this risk assessment provides new insights into disaster risks in the Philippines. First, there is a close link between natural disasters and poverty. On average, the estimates suggest that almost half a million Filipinos per year face transient consumption poverty due to natural disasters. Nationally, the bottom income quintile suffers only 9 percent of the total asset losses, but 31 percent of the total wellbeing losses. The average annual wellbeing losses due to disasters in the Philippines is estimated at US$3.9 billion per year, more than double the asset losses of US$1.4 billion. Second, the regions identified as priorities for risk-management interventions differ depending on which risk metric is used. Cost-benefit analyses based on asset losses direct risk reduction investments toward the richest regions and areas. A focus on poverty or wellbeing rebalances the analysis and generates a different set of regional priorities. Finally, measuring disaster impacts through poverty and wellbeing impacts allows the quantification of the benefits from interventions like rapid post-disaster support and adaptive social protection. Although these measures do not reduce asset losses, they efficiently reduce their consequences for wellbeing by making the population more resilient. -
Publication
The Indirect Cost of Natural Disasters and an Economic Definition of Macroeconomic Resilience
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-07)The welfare impact of a disaster does not depend only on the physical characteristics of the event or its direct impacts in terms of lost lives and assets. Depending on the ability of the economy to cope, recover, and reconstruct, the reconstruction will be more or less difficult, and the welfare effects smaller or larger. This ability, which can be referred to as the macroeconomic resilience of the economy to natural disasters, is an important parameter to estimate the overall vulnerability of a population. Here, resilience is decomposed into two components: instantaneous resilience, which is the ability to limit the magnitude of the immediate loss of income for a given amount of capital losses, and dynamic resilience, which is the ability to reconstruct and recover quickly. The paper proposes a rule of thumb to estimate macroeconomic resilience, based on the interest rate (a higher interest rate decreases resilience and increases welfare losses), the reconstruction duration (a longer reconstruction duration increases welfare losses), and a “ripple-effect” factor that increases or decreases immediate losses (negative if enough idle resources are available to cope; positive if cross-sector and supply-chain issues impair the production of non-affected capital). An optimal risk management strategy is very likely to include measures to reduce direct impacts (disaster risk reduction actions) and measures to reduce indirect impacts (resilience building actions). -
Publication
Socioeconomic Resilience: Multi-Hazard Estimates in 117 Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-11)This paper presents a model to assess the socioeconomic resilience to natural disasters of an economy, defined as its capacity to mitigate the impact of disaster-related asset losses on welfare. The paper proposes a tool to help decision makers identify the most promising policy options to reduce welfare losses from natural disasters. Applied to riverine and storm surge floods, earthquakes, windstorms, and tsunamis in 117 countries, the model provides estimates of country-level socioeconomic resilience. Because hazards disproportionally affect poor people, each $1 of global natural disaster-related asset loss is equivalent to a $1.6 reduction in the affected country’s national income, on average. The model also assesses policy levers to reduce welfare losses in each country. It shows that considering asset losses is insufficient to assess disaster risk management policies. The same reduction in asset losses results in different welfare gains depending on who (especially poor or nonpoor households) benefits. And some policies, such as adaptive social protection, do not reduce asset losses, but still reduce welfare losses. Post-disaster transfers bring an estimated benefit of at least $1.30 per dollar disbursed in the 117 countries studied, and their efficiency is not very sensitive to targeting errors. -
Publication
The Last Mile: Delivery Mechanisms for Post-Disaster Finance
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-09-18)Governments now have access to a large and growing range of financing instruments for rapidlymobilizing funds in the aftermath of a disaster. Instruments like reserve funds, contingent linesof credit, and insurance programs are critical for financing relief, recovery and reconstruction efforts, and they have a demonstrated impact on the ability of governments to manage large-scale disasters. The availability of financial resources however, is only half of the story. The capacity of a government to support post-disaster recovery and reconstruction depends substantially on its ability to deliver these resources effectively to where they are needed. Doingso requires that governments are prepared before a disaster hits, with the right instruments, institutions, and capacities in place. By preparing contingency plans, defining responsibilities, adopting appropriate regulations and norms, enhancing financial inclusion and insurance regulations, and establishing flexible and gender-inclusive social protection systems, governments could improve the reconstruction process and generate over 173 billion dollars per year inbenefits. There are major synergies between the financial instruments that make the resources available and the systems that deliver these resources where they are needed. In the next few years, the design and implementation of new financial instruments will offer an unprecedented opportunity to improve the last-mile delivery of post-disaster support. This opportunity should not be missed.