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Exposure and vulnerability are the main contributing factors of growing impact from climate-related disasters globally. Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamic patterns of vulnerability is important for designing effective disaster risk mitigation and adaptation measures. At national scale, most cross-country studies have suggested that economic vulnerability to disasters decreases as income increases, especially for developing countries. Research covering sub-national climate-related natural disasters is indispensable to obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the effect of regional economic growth on vulnerability reduction. Taking China as a case, this subnational scale study shows that economic development is correlated with the significant reduction in human fatalities but increase in direct economic losses (DELs) from climate-related disasters since 1949. The long-term trend in climate-related disaster vulnerability, reflected by mortality (1978–2015) and DELs (1990–2015) as a share of the total population and Gross Domestic Product, has seen significant decline among all economic regions in China. While notable differences remain among its West, Central and East economic regions, the temporal vulnerability change has been converging. The study further demonstrated that economic development level is correlated with human and economic vulnerability to climate-related disasters, and this vulnerability decreased with the increase of per-capita income. This study suggested that economic development can have nuanced effects on overall human and economic vulnerability to climate-related disasters. We argue that climate change science needs to acknowledge and examine the different pathways of vulnerability effects related to economic development.
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© 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.Tropical cyclones (TCs) have devastating impacts and are responsible for significant damage. Consequently, for TC-induced direct economic loss (DEL) attribution all factors associated with risk (i.e. hazard, exposure and vulnerability) must be examined. This research quantifies the relationship between TC-induced DELs and maximum wind speed, asset value and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita using a regression model with TC records from 2000 to 2015 for China's mainland area. The coefficient of the maximum wind speed term indicates that a doubling of the maximum wind speed increases DELs by 225% [97%, 435%] when the other two variables are held constant. The coefficient of the asset value term indicates that a doubling of asset value exposed to TCs increases DELs by 79% [58%, 103%]; thus, if hazard and vulnerability are assumed to be constant in the future, then a dramatic escalation in TC-induced DELs will occur given the increase in asset value, suggesting that TC-prone areas with rapid urbanization and wealth accumulation will inevitably be subject to higher risk. Reducing the asset value exposure via land-use planning, for example, is important for decreasing TC risk. The coefficient of GDP per capita term indicates that a doubling in GDP per capita could decrease DELs by 54% [39%, 66%]. Because accumulated assets constantly increase people's demand for improved security, stakeholders must invest in risk identification, early warning systems, emergency management and other effective prevention measures with increasing income to reduce vulnerability. This research aims to quantitatively connect TC risk (expected DELs, specifically) to physical and socioeconomic drivers and emphasizes how human dimensions could contribute to TC risk. Moreover, the model can be used to estimate TC risk under climate change and future socioeconomic development in the context of China.
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Significant advancements have been made in examining the relationship between economic development and disaster losses at the global and national scales, but very little research has been done at the sub-national level, especially in China. Based on socioeconomic and disaster impact data from 31 provinces (municipalities, and autonomous regions) in China from 1990 to 2010, ordinary least squares regression was used to determine the relationship between socioeconomic development and effects of natural disasters. Results showed that economic development played a distinct role in mitigating disaster damages in the whole China and its eastern, central and western regions. There existed a U-shaped relationship between economic growth and disaster losses in the whole China and its eastern region, and an inverted-U nonlinearity linkage in its central and western areas. These findings further confirmed the existence of a nonlinear relationship between economic development and disaster losses. Economic growth had played a more important role in mitigating disaster losses in the central region of China than that in the western one. Further investigations demonstrated that as economic develops, there were fewer deaths caused by natural hazards in whole China and all its three regions. The combination of the lower level of education, higher unemployment rate and greater gross dependence ratio has contributed to the increase in death toll caused by natural disasters, but this trend could be partly offset by wealth growth.