Understanding the Value of Reducing Extreme Weather-Induced Mortality Risks: a test of the risk-risk trade-off methodology
by Irene Mussio
Climate change's negative consequences on human health are becoming recognised as a vital worldwide problem, and tackling this impact was listed as a top priority for the UN at the COP27 summit.
According to mounting research, the fluctuation of heat and severe weather patterns has a major impact on both physical and emotional well-being, leading to premature death. The UK is one of the nations coping with the repercussions of climate change, and it is expected to experience significant consequences like extreme weather events such as floods and heatwaves.
Policies targeted at lowering the likelihood of people succumbing to extreme weather occurrences may offer substantial advantages. This risk can be valued for policy assessment by using the UK's current Value of Statistical Life which is Value of a Prevented Fatality.
Recently, "A risk-risk trade-off assessment of climate-induced mortality risk changes" published in Risk Analysis: An International Journal, led by Dr Mussio. To assess preferences for changes in mortality risks, the researchers use risk-risk trade-offs (RRTO), a tool defined by Graham and Wiener as ‘…the change in the portfolio of risks that occurs when a countervailing risk is generated (knowingly or inadvertently) by an intervention to reduce the target risk’.
The risk-risk trade-off method is as follows: Presenting survey participants with hypothetical risk options The goal of this strategy is to lessen the cognitive load on survey participants. Participants are given a single RRTO question (chosen at random from nine possibilities) in which they must trade off mortality risks between extreme weather occurrences and traffic accidents.
Policy Implications: Given the UK's current plans to mitigate climate change and increase resilience to extreme weather events, it is critical to understand individual preferences regarding climate change-related events, specifically the risks associated with extreme weather-induced mortality. The findings emphasise the necessity of factoring in the cost of mitigating extreme weather-related mortality hazards when evaluating climate-related policy. The findings of the study contribute to the continuing debate over climate-related policy decisions.
Additional work and connections to the Deltas: This study emphasises the importance that people place on mitigating the hazards associated with extreme weather-related death. The study verifies the existence of a context premium and pinpoints psychological remoteness as a key factor of this premium. Understanding individual preferences for decreasing mortality risks associated with climate change-related events is becoming increasingly important as climate change intensifies and extreme weather events become more common. Ongoing research aims to investigate other climate change-related events while also focusing on methodological advances of the risk-risk trade-off approach, such as incorporating double-bounded questions and investigating the impact of climate change on morbidity, particularly in areas severely impacted by human and socioeconomic consequences.
If the IPCC's forecasts for 2021 are correct, the impact of climate change, including mortality, is expected to increase significantly, increasing the hazards associated with extreme weather events like floods and heatwaves. Heatwave mortality hazards in India, for example, and cyclones in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river delta (including Bangladesh and the East and North East states of India), are likely to bear the brunt of these threats.
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