BIOMES: Dr. Rohini Pande, Professor of Economics and Director of the Yale Economic Growth Center

About the Seminar:
Climate change is escalating flood risks globally, affecting one in four people. Flood risks exacerbate health and economic crises, increasing morbidity and poverty among vulnerable populations. This paper uses a multi-year randomized controlled trial in Bihar, India, covering 3.6 million people across 319 flood prone communities, to provide causal estimates of how an early warning system (EWS) for floods can mitigate these impacts. During the 2022 and 2023 flood seasons, a last-mile intervention improved EWS implementation: treatment households were 7.30 and 15.21 percentage points more likely to receive an alert in 2022 and 2023, respectively. This, in turn, increased household trust in warnings, and reduced the incidence of unannounced floods in treatment communities. Within the set of high-flood communities, households in treated communities scored 0.16 standard deviations on an ex ante adaptation index, 0.18 standard deviations higher on a physical health index and 0.12 standard deviations higher on an economic well-being index. Underlying these aggregate impacts, are marked changes in household behavior and outcomes: treated households in high-flood areas are more likely to store supplies, protect livestock, and safeguard important documents. They experience fewer waterborne diseases and slip-related accidents, cutting health expenditures. Finally, they were less likely to reduce essential consumption or mortgage assets during the floods. We estimate that for every $1 spent, treatment households saved up to $273 on just medical expenses during severe floods.

About the Series:
Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies"

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

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