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Health externalities of India's expansion of coal plants: Evidence from a national panel of 40,000 households.

ABSTRACT: Coal power generation is expanding rapidly in India and other developing countries. In addition to consequences for climate change, present-day health externalities may also substantially increase the social cost of coal. Health consequences of air pollution have proven important in studies of developed countries, but, despite clear importance, similarly well-identified estimates are less available for developing countries, and no estimates exist for the important case of coal in India. We exploit panel data on Indian households, matched to local changes in exposure to coal plants. Increased exposure to coal plants is associated with worse respiratory health. Consistent with a causal mechanism, the effect is specific: no effect is seen on diarrhea or fever, and no effect on respiratory health is seen of new non-coal plants. Our result is not due to endogenous avoidance behavior, or to differential trends in determinants of respiratory health, either before the period studied or simultaneously.

SUBMITTER: Gupta A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5669305 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Health externalities of India's expansion of coal plants: Evidence from a national panel of 40,000 households.

Gupta Aashish A Spears Dean D

Journal of environmental economics and management 20171101

Coal power generation is expanding rapidly in India and other developing countries. In addition to consequences for climate change, present-day health externalities may also substantially increase the social cost of coal. Health consequences of air pollution have proven important in studies of developed countries, but, despite clear importance, similarly well-identified estimates are less available for developing countries, and no estimates exist for the important case of coal in India. We explo ...[more]

PMID: 29129948

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Project description:When balancing environmental preservation and economic development, it is critical to evaluate how taxpayers value national park land and for what they are valuing it. One key component of this evaluation is to calculate a "passive use value," or the willingness to pay (WTP), for protection of land that may never directly be used, and to determine what benefits of land protection motivate this passive use value. We estimated the WTP for a 5% expansion of Denali National Park in Alaska (an expansion of 325,340 acres) using a questionnaire and the contingent valuation method. The survey first educated respondents on Alaskan geography, the current status of protected land and wildlife in Alaska, and common arguments for and against National Park expansion. The survey then described a proposal to expand the Denali National Park and asked a series of questions designed to bound the respondents WTP. Finally, the survey asked respondents to answer questions about what motivated their support or disapproval for the program. Multiple methodologies were used to estimate the national average WTP, resulting in a WTP range of a single payment of $77 to $409. This is estimated to be a total WTP of $15.1 billion to $79.3 billion for all individuals aged 18 to 64 in the United States, or $363.1 million to $1.91 billion per year in 2017 dollars. Respondents to the survey indicated that their support is driven primarily by increased protection from oil spills (85.8% deemed this very important or important), by increasing and protecting Alaska's biodiversity (84.3%), and preserving Alaska's beauty (84.2%). These results can help inform recent, current, and future debates about land use. President Obama significantly expanded land protections, while President Trump is continuing to scale back land protections, including opening up untouched land in Alaska in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. These results suggest that there are significant passive use values that should be considered when deciding whether to expand or reduce protection of land. Given that passive use values are significant, this suggests that the economic benefits must be large to tip a cost-benefit analysis in favor of reduced land protections.

Project description:BackgroundGlobally, the threat of infectious diseases, particularly emerging infectious diseases, originating at the human-animal-environment interface, has caught health systems off guard. With forecasts that future pathogen emergence will be centred in hotspots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the need to prepare policy frameworks that can combat this threat is urgent.DiscussionEmergence of diseases such as avian influenza and Ebola virus disease, which threatened social disruption, have established the need for intersectoral coordination/collaboration. These events led to the initiation of establishing institutionalised collaborative frameworks in India to adopt a One Health approach to disease prevention and control. However, the gains made in influenza control could not be adapted to other infectious diseases. Intersectoral coordination was briefly carried out, more as a reactive response to threats. The systemic failure to sustain such efforts have therefore, only undermined a coordinated response. The recent draft National Health Policy, 2015, has also failed to establish the need for intersectoral coordination in disease control approaches. Neglecting the need to endorse linkages between human health, animal health and husbandry, agriculture, and environmental sectors, has led to duplicative and weak response systems. The absence of health impact assessment with respect to the development agenda in policies, has cast negative effects on the health and wellbeing of man, animal, and the environment. Lack of attention to building core capacity in these critical sectors has further raised challenges in designing and deploying mitigation strategies. With developing countries like India being home to a major portion of the world's poorest livestock farmers, the absence of a policy discourse that endorses the One Health approach in development and health policies is a major hurdle in eliminating poverty and poverty-related diseases.ConclusionsThe adoption of One Health approaches in health and related sectoral policies is a critical policy requirement for India and other developing countries. The goal should be to not just establish preparedness plans, but also to encourage a policy environment where assessment and mitigation of downstream impacts of different agenda are incorporated.

Dataset Information

Health externalities of India's expansion of coal plants: Evidence from a national panel of 40,000 households.

Publications

Health externalities of India's expansion of coal plants: Evidence from a national panel of 40,000 households.

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