IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-13-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Flooding and Resilience: Valuing Conservation Investments in a World with Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Kousky, Carolyn

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Walls, Margaret

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Chu, Ziyan

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

Communities in the United States are showing increasing interest in the use of forests, wetlands, and other natural areas to provide protection against extreme events. As the climate changes and such events become more frequent and/or more severe, investments in the conservation of natural areas should become more valuable. But how much more valuable is an open question. In this study, we evaluate the climate resilience benefits of a green infrastructure investment in Missouri: the Meramec Greenway. A buffer of forested lands and other open space, the Meramec Greenway runs along the Meramec River from its confluence with the Mississippi River south of St. Louis into the Ozark uplands. The study builds off of a recent benefit–cost analysis of the Greenway conducted by the authors but evaluates the additional benefits of floodplain conservation that might be provided if floods in the region (a) become more frequent and/or (b) worsen in severity. Results suggest that the benefits of the Greenway in terms of avoided flood damages are greater in both types of climate change scenarios. However, the size of the benefits under current conditions is the more important finding; climate change reinforces the value of the conservation investment but is not the main story.

Suggested Citation

  • Kousky, Carolyn & Walls, Margaret & Chu, Ziyan, 2013. "Flooding and Resilience: Valuing Conservation Investments in a World with Climate Change," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-38, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-13-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-13-38.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul J. Ferraro, 2003. "Assigning priority to environmental policy interventions in a heterogeneous world," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 27-43.
    2. Kousky, Carolyn & Walls, Margaret, 2014. "Floodplain conservation as a flood mitigation strategy: Examining costs and benefits," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 119-128.
    3. Lawrence H. Goulder & Roberton C. Williams, 2012. "The Choice Of Discount Rate For Climate Change Policy Evaluation," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(04), pages 1-18.
    4. Holly P. Jones & David G. Hole & Erika S. Zavaleta, 2012. "Harnessing nature to help people adapt to climate change," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(7), pages 504-509, July.
    5. Boyd, James & Epanchin-Niell, Rebecca & Siikamaki, Juha, 2012. "Conservation Return on Investment Analysis: A Review of Results, Methods, and New Directions," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-01, Resources for the Future.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Galen Newman & Garett T. Sansom & Siyu Yu & Katie R. Kirsch & Dongying Li & Youjung Kim & Jennifer A. Horney & Gunwoo Kim & Saima Musharrat, 2022. "A Framework for Evaluating the Effects of Green Infrastructure in Mitigating Pollutant Transferal and Flood Events in Sunnyside, Houston, TX," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-16, April.
    2. Diana Carolina Del Angel & David Yoskowitz & Matthew Vernon Bilskie & Scott C. Hagen, 2022. "A Socioeconomic Dataset of the Risk Associated with the 1% and 0.2% Return Period Stillwater Flood Elevation under Sea-Level Rise for the Northern Gulf of Mexico," Data, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-15, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kousky, Carolyn & Walls, Margaret, 2014. "Floodplain conservation as a flood mitigation strategy: Examining costs and benefits," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 119-128.
    2. Chabba, Meenakshi & Bhat, Mahadev G. & Sarmiento, Juan Pablo, 2022. "Risk-based benefit-cost analysis of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction with considerations of co-benefits, equity, and sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    3. Margaret Walls & Yusuke Kuwayama, 2019. "Evaluating Payments for Watershed Services Programs in the United States," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(04), pages 1-38, October.
    4. Jianxin Yang & Jian Gong & Wenwu Tang, 2019. "Prioritizing Spatially Aggregated Cost-Effective Sites in Natural Reserves to Mitigate Human-Induced Threats: A Case Study of the Qinghai Plateau, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-23, March.
    5. Allan Beltrán & David Maddison & Robert J. R. Elliott, 2018. "Assessing the Economic Benefits of Flood Defenses: A Repeat‐Sales Approach," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(11), pages 2340-2367, November.
    6. Lena I. Fuldauer & Scott Thacker & Robyn A. Haggis & Francesco Fuso-Nerini & Robert J. Nicholls & Jim W. Hall, 2022. "Targeting climate adaptation to safeguard and advance the Sustainable Development Goals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Nazmul Huq & Antje Bruns & Lars Ribbe & Saleemul Huq, 2017. "Mainstreaming Ecosystem Services Based Climate Change Adaptation (EbA) in Bangladesh: Status, Challenges and Opportunities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-20, June.
    8. Soh, Moonwon & Cho, Seong-Hoon & Yu, Edward & Boyer, Christopher & English, Burton, 2018. "Targeting Payments for Ecosystem Services Given Ecological and Economic Objectives," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266502, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    9. Johansson, R. & Meyer, S. & Whistance, J. & Thompson, W. & Debnath, D., 2020. "Greenhouse gas emission reduction and cost from the United States biofuels mandate," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    10. Mutlu, Asli & Roy, Debraj & Filatova, Tatiana, 2023. "Capitalized value of evolving flood risks discount and nature-based solution premiums on property prices," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    11. Cho, Seong-Hoon & Soh, Moonwon & English, Burton C. & Yu, T. Edward & Boyer, Christopher N., 2019. "Targeting payments for forest carbon sequestration given ecological and economic objectives," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 214-226.
    12. Adrian Amelung, 2016. "Das "Paris-Agreement": Durchbruch der Top-Down-Klimaschutzverhandlungen im Kreise der Vereinten Nationen," Otto-Wolff-Institut Discussion Paper Series 03/2016, Otto-Wolff-Institut für Wirtschaftsordnung, Köln, Deutschland.
    13. Matthew Oliver Ralp Dimal & Victor Jetten, 2020. "Analyzing preference heterogeneity for soil amenity improvements using discrete choice experiment," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 1323-1351, February.
    14. Cropper, Maureen, 2012. "How Should Benefits and Costs Be Discounted in an Intergenerational Context?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-42, Resources for the Future.
    15. Camila I. Donatti & Celia A. Harvey & David Hole & Steven N. Panfil & Hanna Schurman, 2020. "Indicators to measure the climate change adaptation outcomes of ecosystem-based adaptation," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 413-433, February.
    16. Lima, Letícia Santos de & Ramos Barón, Pablo Andres & Villamayor-Tomas, Sergio & Krueger, Tobias, 2019. "Will PES Schemes Survive in the Long-term Without Evidence of Their Effectiveness? Exploring Four Water-related Cases in Colombia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 211-223.
    17. Whitten, Stuart M., 2017. "Designing and implementing conservation tender metrics: Twelve core considerations," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 561-571.
    18. Cho, Seong-Hoon & Kim, Taeyoung & Larson, Eric R. & Armsworth, Paul R., 2017. "Economies of scale in forestland acquisition costs for nature conservation," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 73-82.
    19. Wätzold, Frank & Drechsler, Martin, 2014. "Agglomeration payment, agglomeration bonus or homogeneous payment?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 85-101.
    20. José Armando Cobián Álvarez & Budy P. Resosudarmo, 2019. "The cost of floods in developing countries’ megacities: a hedonic price analysis of the Jakarta housing market, Indonesia," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 21(4), pages 555-577, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    land conservation; extreme weather events; peak discharges; Hazus; avoided flood damages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • Q24 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Land

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-13-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.