Infrastructure built to protect cities from flooding can increase economic damages elsewhere.
Image credit: Michelle A. Hummel.
Edited by Stephen Polasky, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, and approved November 14, 2019 (received for review July 7, 2019)
Significance
The increasing losses from tropical cyclones in developing countries highlight the importance of understanding how natural habitats can be used to protect assets and economic activity against this hazard. Here, we estimate the relationship between hurricane strength and economic damages in Central America and explore how the presence of mangrove habitats mitigates these losses. We find that hurricanes lead to significant losses in economic activity in the short run and that wide mangrove belts are capable of mitigating these losses. One important implication of these findings is that only large-scale mangrove conservation efforts are likely to provide a benefit in terms of protection.
Abstract
This paper evaluates whether mangroves can mitigate the impact of hurricanes on economic activity. The paper assembles a regionwide panel dataset that measures local economic activity using nightlights, potential hurricane damages using a detailed wind field model, and mangrove protection by mapping the width of mangrove forests on the path to the coast. The results show that hurricanes have negative short-run effects on economic activity, with losses likely concentrated in coastal lowlands that are exposed to both wind and storm surge hazards. In these coastal lowlands, the estimates show that nightlights decrease by up to 24% in areas that are unprotected by mangroves. By comparison, the impact of the hurricanes observed in the sample is fully mitigated in areas protected by mangrove belts of 1 km or more.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: adelvalle{at}gsu.edu or meriksson{at}gsu.edu.
Author contributions: A.d.V. and M.E. designed research; A.d.V. and M.E. performed research; A.d.V. and M.E. analyzed data; O.A.I. and J.J.M. provided data; and A.d.V., M.E., O.A.I., and J.J.M. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: The data and code used in this paper have been deposited in the open Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) repository, https://doi.org/10.3886/E115611V1.
This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1911617116/-/DCSupplemental.
Published under the PNAS license.
Mangroves protect coastal economic activity from hurricanes
Article Classifications
- Social Sciences
- Sustainability Science
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