rise more than six-fold by 2100 (Vousdoukas et al (2023). Kiribati is the worst affected, with a projected EAFA of between 35 and 55 percent of its total land area by 2100. Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, the Bahamas, Micronesia and the Maldives will also be badly affected.<sup>9</sup> With population growth in coastal areas and economic growth, by 2100, the expected number of people exposed to annual flooding is projected to increase around 4.5 to seven times depending on the global warming scenario. Expected annual damages (EAD) will also multiply several times in real terms. The Maldives is projected to incur EAD of 12.5 percent of GDP by 2100.

Doan et al (2023) develop a methodology for estimating the numbers of people who are exposed to extreme weather events and vulnerable to suffering severe losses if these events materialise. The extreme weather events considered are drought, flood, heatwave and tropical cyclone, and an extreme event is defined in terms of a given intensity and return period; for example, an extreme weather event for a tropical cyclone is one with a windspeed of category 2 or above and a return period of 100 years. The methodology enables an estimate to be made of the total number of people exposed to each extreme weather event in each country, based on their geographical location and the probability of such an event occurring. Vulnerability is determined on the basis of income (people below or just above a poverty line) and other indicators which are known to be correlated with vulnerability to shocks such as educational attainment, access to piped water and electricity, availability of a social safety net, etc. Hence the population which is vulnerable to an extreme weather event is a subset of the total population exposed to that event. Many of the SIDS have a very large share of their population exposed to an extreme weather event. For example, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Haiti, Jamaica, Mauritius, Samoa, St, Lucia, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu each have most or all of their total population exposed. However, the numbers of people who are categorised as vulnerable to extreme weather evets is much lower in most of the SIDS, with the exception of Haiti, because they have relatively low poverty rates and good social indicators, compared to other EMDEs. As such, although a large share of the population is exposed to extreme weather events in many SIDS, their relatively high income levels, educational attainment, etc provide the population with some resilience to these shocks.

_Empirical research on the economic costs of climate related natural disasters_ Researchers have used various methods to estimate the impact of tropical cyclones and other natural disasters on GDP and macro-fiscal variables, including vector autoregressions (VARs) and event studies. Acevedo (2014) used a panel VAR model to study the impact of floods and hurricanes on GDP and public debt over a 40-year period in the Caribbean. Both floods and storms have a negative impact on GDP. Floods lead to a rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio, but storms (especially severe ones) do not, possibly because they lead to increased aid inflows or debt relief measures. Storms have more pronounced effects on a sub-sample of Caribbean countries—the member states of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU), which are generally smaller and therefore more vulnerable to systemic damage from hurricanes. Storms reduce GDP in the ECCU countries, with severe storms having a larger impact, and both

> 9 Several dependent territories are also projected to suffer extensive EAFA from SLR, especially the Turks and Caicos, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

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