Disasters and Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This introduction seeks to provide context for the papers included in this special issue by drawing on the broader literature. Salient development challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean, which can be aggravated by climate change, are low economic growth, high poverty and inequality, and fiscal vulnerabilities. This paper summarizes some of the evidence on the economic implications of climate change with an emphasis on the evidence pertaining to Latin America and the Caribbean; and how the research papers included in this special issue provide answers for some of the relevant and remaining questions about this topic. Keywords Climate changes · disasters · economic impacts · development challenges JEL Codes O13 · Q54 · Q56 · O54 Global temperatures have been steadily trending upward since the early twentieth century. Panel A of Fig. 1 shows that the global temperature anomaly, or the difference between the annual mean temperature and the mean temperature over 1901-2000, has steadily climbed. As is observed globally, the temperature in Latin America and the Caribbean has also steadily trended upward, with temperatures in South America increasing even more rapidly than in the Caribbean (see Panel B of Fig. 1). Global temperatures have increased faster since the 1970s (Gulev et al. 2021). Panel A of Fig. 2 shows that the average global temperature anomaly has increased in each decade since the 1950s. Panel B of Fig. 2 shows a similar acceleration of rising temperature in South America and the Caribbean. More recently, seven years between 2015 and 2022 have been the warmest in recorded history. In particular, the years 2016 and 2020 stand out as the hottest years to date (NOAA National Centers for Environmental information n.d.). Despite some progress in reducing GHG emissions, the climate will continue to change as long as we keep emitting more GHGs to the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that climatic changes will accelerate in every region