Publication: The Impact of Sea Level Rise on Developing Countries : A Comparative Analysis
Loading...
Date
2007-02
ISSN
Published
2007-02
Editor(s)
Abstract
Sea level rise (SLR) due to climate change is a serious global threat. The scientific evidence is now overwhelming. Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions and associated global warming could well promote SLR of 1m-3m in this century, and unexpectedly rapid breakup of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets might produce a 5m SLR. In this paper, the authors have assessed the consequences of continued SLR for 84 developing countries. Geographic Information System (GIS) software has been used to overlay the best available, spatially-disaggregated global data on critical impact elements (land, population, agriculture, urban extent, wetlands, and GDP) with the inundation zones projected for 1-5m SLR. The results reveal that hundreds of millions of people in the developing world are likely to be displaced by SLR within this century, and accompanying economic and ecological damage will be severe for many. At the country level, results are extremely skewed, with severe impacts limited to a relatively small number of countries. For these countries (such as Vietnam, A. R. of Egypt, and The Bahamas), however, the consequences of SLR are potentially catastrophic. For many others, including some of the largest (such as China), the absolute magnitudes of potential impacts are very large. At the other extreme, many developing countries experience limited impacts. Among regions, East Asia and the Middle East and North Africa exhibit the greatest relative impacts. To date, there is little evidence that the international community has seriously considered the implications of SLR for population location and infrastructure planning in developing countries. The authors hope that the information provided in this paper will encourage immediate planning for adaptation.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Dasgupta, Susmita; Laplante, Benoit; Meisner, Craig; Wheeler, David; Yan, Jianping. 2007. The Impact of Sea Level Rise on Developing Countries : A Comparative Analysis. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 4136. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7174 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication The Future of Poverty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-15)Climate change is increasingly acknowledged as a critical issue with far-reaching socioeconomic implications that extend well beyond environmental concerns. Among the most pressing challenges is its impact on global poverty. This paper projects the potential impacts of unmitigated climate change on global poverty rates between 2023 and 2050. Building on a study that provided a detailed analysis of how temperature changes affect economic productivity, this paper integrates those findings with binned data from 217 countries, sourced from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform. By simulating poverty rates and the number of poor under two climate change scenarios, the paper uncovers some alarming trends. One of the primary findings is that the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide could be nearly doubled due to climate change. In all scenarios, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to bear the brunt, contributing the largest number of poor people, with estimates ranging between 40.5 million and 73.5 million by 2050. Another significant finding is the disproportionate impact of inequality on poverty. Even small increases in inequality can lead to substantial rises in poverty levels. For instance, if every country’s Gini coefficient increases by just 1 percent between 2022 and 2050, an additional 8.8 million people could be pushed below the international poverty line by 2050. In a more extreme scenario, where every country’s Gini coefficient increases by 10 percent between 2022 and 2050, the number of people falling into poverty could rise by an additional 148.8 million relative to the baseline scenario. These findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive climate policies that not only mitigate environmental impacts but also address socioeconomic vulnerabilities.Publication Engineering Ukraine’s Wirtschaftswunder(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-29)As Ukraine emerges from the devastation of war, it faces a historic opportunity to engineer its own Wirtschaftswunder—a productivity-driven economic transformation akin to post-war West Germany. While investment-led growth may offer quick wins, it is efficiency, innovation, and institutional reform that will determine Ukraine’s long-term economic trajectory. Drawing on rich micro-level firm data spanning 25 years, this paper uncovers deep structural distortions that have suppressed creative destruction and productivity in Ukraine. It finds that business dynamism is on the decline, alongside rising market concentration among incumbent businesses, including low productivity state owned enterprises. To inform priorities for reviving business dynamism, this study develops a model of creative destruction drawing on Acemoglu et al. (2018) and Akcigit et al. (2021). The quantitative assessment highlights that policies that discipline entrenched incumbents are the bedrock for reviving business dynamism and engineer Ukraine’s Wirtschaftswunder. Policies targeting specific types of firms have limited efficacy when incumbents run wild.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Disentangling the Key Economic Channels through Which Infrastructure Affects Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the cases of energy, digital, and transport infrastructure. Overall, the literature review provides strong evidence of infrastructure’s positive impact on employment, particularly for women. In the case of electricity, this impact arises from freeing time that would otherwise be spent on household tasks. Similarly, digital infrastructure, particularly mobile phone coverage, has demonstrated positive labor market effects, often driven by private sector investments rather than large public expenditures, which are typically required for other large-scale infrastructure projects. The evidence on structural transformation is also positive, with some notable exceptions, such as studies that find no significant impact on structural transformation in rural India in the cases of electricity and roads. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities, due to the absence of agglomeration economies and complementary inputs such as human capital. Accordingly, reducing transport costs alone may not be sufficient to drive economic transformation in rural areas. The spatial dimension of transformation is particularly relevant for transport, both internationally—by enhancing trade integration—and within countries, where economic development tends to drive firms and jobs toward urban centers, benefitting from economies scale and network effects. Turning to organizational transformation, evidence on skill bias in developing countries is more mixed than in developed countries and may vary considerably by context. Further research, especially on the possible reasons explaining the differences between developed and developing economies, is needed.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surges : A Comparative Analysis of Impacts in Developing Countries(2009-04-01)An increase in sea surface temperature is evident at all latitudes and in all oceans. The current understanding is that ocean warming plays a major role in intensified cyclone activity and heightened storm surges. The vulnerability of coastlines to intensified storm surges can be ascertained by overlaying Geographic Information System information with data on land, population density, agriculture, urban extent, major cities, wetlands, and gross domestic product for inundation zones likely to experience more intense storms and a 1 meter sea-level rise. The results show severe impacts are likely to be limited to a relatively small number of countries and a cluster of large cities at the low end of the international income distribution.Publication Climate Change and Sea Level Rise : A Review of the Scientific Evidence(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-05)Sea-level rise (SLR) due to climate change is a serious global threat: the scientific evidence is now overwhelming. The rate of global sea level rise was faster from 1993 to 2003, about 3.1 mm per year, as compared to the average rate of 1.8 mm per year from 1961 to 2003 (IPCC, 2007); and significantly higher than the average rate of 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr increase recorded by geological data over the last 3,000 years. Anthropogenic warming and SLR will continue for centuries due to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized. This paper reviews the scientific literature to date on climate change and sea level rise. There appears to be a consensus across studies that global sea level is projected to rise during the 21st century at a greater rate than during the period 1961 to 2003 and unanimous agreement that SLR will not be geographically uniform. Ocean thermal expansion is projected to contribute significantly, and land ice will increasingly lose mass at an accelerated rate. But most controversial are the mass balance loss estimates of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and what the yet un-quantified dynamic processes will imply in terms of SLR. Recent evidence on the vulnerability of Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets to climate warming raises the alarming possibility of SLR by one meter or more by the end of the 21st century.Publication Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Wetlands : Impacts and Costs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-11)Scientific evidence indicates that global warming could well lead to a sea-level rise of 1 meter or more in the 21st century. This paper seeks to quantify how a 1-meter sea-level rise that would affect coastal wetlands in 76 developing countries and territories, taking into account how much of wetlands would be submerged and how likely the wetlands would move inland as the coastline recedes. It is estimated that approximately 64 percent of the freshwater marsh, 66 percent of Global Lakes and Wetlands Database coastal wetlands, and 61 percent of brackish/saline wetlands are at risk. A large percentage of this loss would be shouldered by two regions: East Asia and the Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa. At the country level, the results are extremely skewed with a small number of countries being severely affected. In East Asia, China and Vietnam would bear the brunt of these losses. In the Middle East and North Africa, Libya and Egypt would see the most losses. A rough estimate of the economic value of the goods and services produced by wetlands at risk is approximately $630 million per year in 2000 U.S. dollars.Publication Environment Matters at the World Bank, 2007 Annual Review : Climate Change and Adaptation(Washington, DC, 2007)This edition of environment matters arrives just as the international community embarks on a two-year process to secure a new global framework to limit the amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) entering the atmosphere and devise ways to help developing countries adapt to and prepare themselves for the effects of climate change. At the World Bank, the author believe that climate change, and developing countries' adaptation to it, is a critical challenge of our time that must be integrated into core development strategies. Changes in temperatures and weather patterns will affect the frequency and severity of rainfall, droughts, floods, and access to water, flood protection, health, and the use of land. These impacts will not be evenly distributed. The poorest countries and people, those least responsible for climate change and least able to cope with it, will suffer earliest and most due to their geographical location, low incomes, and low institutional capacity, as well as their greater reliance on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture. This is why building up resilience to increasing climate variability is the most significant climate challenge facing many developing countries. But we believe that adaptation, while necessary in and of itself, can also serve to meet the development objectives of countries. Many appropriate adaptive measures are consistent with good development practice. They can improve the local environment, increase resilience to current and future climate variability and to natural disasters, and ease the dissemination of innovative technologies. They can also reduce resource scarcity within specific social groups or regions, thereby addressing some of the principal causes of social unrest and violent strife. In other words, climate action is development action.Publication Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on Mountain Hydrology : Development of a Methodology through a Case Study in the Andes of Peru(World Bank, 2011)The objective of study of the impacts of climate change on mountain hydrology is to develop a methodology to assess the net impacts of climate change on the hydrological response in mountainous regions. This is done through a case study in the Peruvian Andes. There are few examples of predictions of the impact of climate change on resource availability and even fewer examples of the applications of such predictions to planning for sustainable economic development. This report presents a summary of the efforts of a Bank energy and climate change team to develop methodological tools for the assessment of climate impacts on surface hydrology in the Peruvian Andes. The importance of analyzing the potential climate impacts on hydrology in Peru arises in part from concerns about the retreat of tropical glaciers, the drying of unique Andean wetland ecosystems, as well as increased weather variability and weather extremes, all of which will affect water regulation. The study, together with a recently published report by the World Bank, Peru Overcoming the Barriers to Hydropower, is intended to inform plans for energy development in Peru and enable provides some insights into how hydrology may behave under future climate scenarios in Peru, the main purpose is to contribute to the methodological approaches to anticipate impacts from climate change in the Andes Region and other mountain ranges
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.Publication Design Thinking for Social Innovation(2010-07)Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.Publication Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06)The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.Publication Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008(2009-06-01)This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.Publication Measuring Financial Inclusion : The Global Findex Database(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04)This paper provides the first analysis of the Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database, a new set of indicators that measure how adults in 148 economies save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The data show that 50 percent of adults worldwide have an account at a formal financial institution, though account penetration varies widely across regions, income groups and individual characteristics. In addition, 22 percent of adults report having saved at a formal financial institution in the past 12 months, and 9 percent report having taken out a new loan from a bank, credit union or microfinance institution in the past year. Although half of adults around the world remain unbanked, at least 35 percent of them report barriers to account use that might be addressed by public policy. Among the most commonly reported barriers are high cost, physical distance, and lack of proper documentation, though there are significant differences across regions and individual characteristics.