2018 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

Changes to the environment and the climate are already having serious adverse consequences for societies around the world. As the frequency and intensity of these environmental and climate issues increase, the need to evaluate their impact becomes increasingly pressing. Recent technological advances such as the wide availability of remote-sensing and geospatial data now allow us to estimate these damages and societal repercussions in more accurate and detailed ways. This session presents three papers which make use of these data and cutting edge methods to study the effects of air pollution and climate change on local communities in emerging economies. The first paper provides new and locally-relevant measures of air pollution and the resulting health costs for communities in Brazil. The second tracks the path of cyclones in India to examine the behavioral response of farmers whose production is on or near the destruction path. Finally, the last paper explores whether changes in temperatures and precipitations in Brazil over the past half century have led rural households to migrate to less climate-sensitive areas or to the cities.