Discounting Disaster: Land Markets and Climate Change in the Indian Sundarbans

Data scarcity has hindered studies on the impacts of climate change on land prices in the coastal regions of developing countries. Focused on the Indian Sundarbans, this paper is at the forefront of such research. Market conditions in the region feature unregulated transactions, unenforced zoning, and a lack of disaster insurance. For many residents with hereditary land ownership, stark poverty eliminates any risk buffer provided by savings or other non-essential liquid assets. Using new household surveys and environmental data, our study hypothesizes that salinization and cyclone strikes have already adversely affected land prices. We quantify such impacts using a georeferenced panel of 342 salinity monitoring stations and a spatial raster database on all cyclonic storm strikes since 1970. Our econometric results reveal highly significant negative impacts for both factors. We use the regression results to predict land prices for the most and least favourable environmental conditions recorded in our database. The results show that these climate change–related conditions account for spatial differentials greater than an order of magnitude in land prices. Such extreme risk differentials suggest high financial and fiscal stakes, underscoring the critical importance of appropriately targeted adjustment policies.

数据稀缺性掣肘了发展中国家沿海地区气候变化对土地价格影响的相关研究。本研究聚焦印度孙德尔本斯地区，走在该领域研究的前沿。该区域的市场环境存在交易无规监管、土地分区规划执行不力、缺乏灾害保险等特征。对于许多拥有世袭土地所有权的居民而言，极端贫困使其无法通过储蓄或其他非必需流动资产构建风险缓冲机制。本研究依托全新的家庭调研数据与环境观测数据，提出研究假设：土壤盐渍化与气旋侵袭已对土地价格产生负面影响。本研究采用342个盐度监测站的地理参考面板数据，以及1970年以来所有气旋风暴事件的空间栅格数据库，对上述影响进行量化分析。计量经济学分析结果显示，两类因素均产生了高度显著的负向影响。本研究利用回归结果，对数据库中记录的最优与最差环境条件下的土地价格进行预测。结果表明，这些与气候变化相关的环境条件造成的土地价格空间差异幅度超过一个数量级。如此极端的风险差异凸显了极高的金融与财政风险，也彰显了制定精准适配的调整政策的极端重要性。