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Mangroves shelter coastlines during hazardous storm events with coastal communities experiencing mangrove deforestation are increasingly vulnerable to economic damages resulting from cyclones. To date, the benefits of mangroves in terms of protecting coastal areas have been estimated only through individual case studies of specific regions or countries. Using spatially referenced data and statistical methods, we track from 2000 to 2012 the impact of cyclones on economic activity in coastal regions inhabited by nearly 2,000 tropical and subtropical communities across 23 major mangrove-holding countries. We use nighttime luminosity to represent temporal trends in coastal economic activity and find that direct cyclone exposure typically results in permanent loss of 5.4–6.7 mo for a community with an average mangrove extent (6.3 m per meter of coastline); whereas, a community with more extensive mangroves (25.6 m per meter of coastline) experiences a loss equivalent to 2.6–5.5 mo. These results suggest that mangrove restoration efforts for protective benefits may bemore cost effective, and mangrove deforestation more damaging, than previously thought.

Land degradation is a global problem that particularly impacts the poor rural inhabitants of low and middle-income countries. We improve upon existing literature by estimating the extent of rural populations in 2000 and 2010 globally on degrading and improving agricultural land, taking into account the role of market access, and analyzing the resulting impacts on poverty. Using a variety of spatially referenced datasets, we estimate that 1.33 billion people worldwide in 2000 were located on degrading agricultural land (DAL), of which 1.26 billion were in developing countries. Almost all the world's 200 million people on remote DAL were in developing countries, which is about 6% of their rural population. There were also 1.54 billion rural people on improving agricultural land (IAL), with 1.34 billion in developing countries. We find that a lower share of people in 2000 on DAL, or a higher share on IAL, lowers significantly how much overall economic growth reduces poverty from 2000 to 2012 across 83 developing countries. As the population on DAL and IAL in developing countries grew by 13% and 15% respectively from 2000 to 2010, these changing spatial distributions of rural populations could impact significantly future poverty in developing countries.

Evidence suggests that mangroves protect economic activity in coastal areas. We estimate this protection from mangroves and coastal elevation globally, examining both “direct” and “indirect” exposure events (< 100 km vs. ≥ 100 km distance from a cyclone’s “eye”, respectively). We find that higher elevation (≥ 50 m) or wide mangroves (≥ 10 m seaward width) alone shelter economic activity from indirect cyclone exposure, whereas protection from direct cyclone exposure occurs only in high elevation communities with wide mangroves. Our results reveal that the majority of these “safe havens” are in upper middle-income countries but provide significant benefits to populations in lower middle-income countries.

Remote less-favored agricultural lands (LFAL) are regions in developing countries that face severe biophysical constraints on production and are in geographical locations that have limited market access. We estimate that, across developing countries, 130 million people with high infant mortality live in such areas, and the incidence is 40%. In low-income countries, the population in remote LFAL with high infant mortality increased 25% over 2000–2010 to 57 million, and the incidence is 94%. From case study evidence, we identify the key environmental and economic characteristics that influence the ability of rural households in remote LFAL to avoid poverty. We incorporate these characteristics in a model analyzing the behavior of a representative household, which illustrates conditions that enable the household to escape subsistence-level poverty. We also show empirically for 83 developing countries that the share of rural population on remote LFAL in 2000 affects the poverty-reducing impacts of per capita income growth over 2000–2012.

Our spatial analysis indicates that in 2000 over one third of the rural population in developing countries was located on less favored agricultural land and areas, which are constrained by biophysical conditions or poor market access. We examine whether these spatial distributions of rural population in 2000 influence subsequent changes in the rate of poverty from 2000 to 2012 in 83 developing countries. We find no evidence of a direct impact on changes in poverty, but there is a significant indirect impact via the elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to growth. If climate change leads to more people concentrated in these areas, or an increase in unfavorable agricultural regions, then the poverty-reducing impact of overall per capita income growth could be further weakened. Reducing poverty will require targeting rural populations in less favored lands and remote areas and encouraging out-migration.

This paper develops a model to capture the key features of poverty, credit constraints and resource management faced by poor rural households. We assume that, due to the existence of asymmetric information and moral hazard, the household faces an increasing cost of credit as its debt/equity ratio rises. A household exploiting a natural resource may fall into a poverty trap, but only if it is unable to afford the increasing borrowing costs implied by increasing debt to allow it to avoid such a trap, or if it discounts future utility so much that a balanced growth path cannot be financed at any level of long-run borrowing. In contrast, along an optimal balanced growth path, the household’s asset wealth, purchased inputs, resource stock and consumption increase at the same constant rate. However, over the long run there may be carrying capacity limits that prevent the resource from improving further. The household may then direct its savings to accumulating financial assets, and eventually under certain conditions may become a net creditor with resource exploitation becoming a less and less important source of its income.