Room 212
Research seminar. Flooding and livelihood diversification in Nigeria: the view from the ground and the view from the sky
Pierre Biscaye
Université Clermont Auvergne, CERDI
Coauthor : Abdulrasheed Isah (ETH Zürich)
Abstract
Floods are among the most common and destructive natural disasters, and climate change is increasing flood risk. But identifying exposure to floods suffers from measurement errors and the evidence on how these disasters affect livelihood decisions of farm households in developing countries is limited. This paper uses nationally-representative panel household survey data from Nigeria in a difference-in-differences framework to analyze how exposure to flood events affect household labor supply and livelihood outcomes over a seven year time horizon. We first show that identification of community flood exposure varies depending on whether household survey reports or satellite imagery are used, with measurement and definition issues in both sources leading them to capture different types of flood events. Under both approaches, we find that households in agricultural communities exposed to major floods in 2012 decrease production of commercially-oriented crops over the following years and are more likely to experience food insecurity. Households exposed to floods identified by satellite imagery significantly increase non-farm enterprise income and reallocate labor from crop production to existing businesses, while those exposed to survey-reported flooding intensify low-value staple crop production with no increase in non-farm enterprise activity. Whether we conclude that flood exposure primarily pushes households to exit agriculture or constrains such livelihood diversification therefore depends on the approach to flood identification, indicating that the nature of the shock determines how it affects households. The results highlight the importance of deciding how to measure exposure to weather-related shocks, but demonstrate persistent effects of such exposure on household livelihood decisions.