Box 1.3 COVID-19 (Coronovirus) Fallout

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a public health crisis unmatched in modern times. Along with the health crisis, the economic fallout has also been immense. Economies worldwide are expected to find themselves in moderate to deep recessions, with global economic output expected to be 5 percent below prepandemic projections (World Bank 2021). Large job losses and a significant impact on livelihoods are predicted, with dire consequences for poverty reduction, particularly in developing countries. Conservative estimates suggest that the resulting economic contraction will push about 150 million people into poverty worldwide (World Bank 2021).

The money that migrants send to their home regions is of special concern. Remittances have played an increasingly important role in alleviating poverty and sustaining growth. They also allow households in the home region to hedge against temporary shocks induced by weather variability or demand fluctuations. However, the COVID-19 crisis has spurred a dramatic reversal and resulted in an elimination of this insurance mechanism, leaving source areas at even greater risk of poverty, food insecurity, and income fluctuations. By the end of 2021, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are projected to fall by about 14 percent compared with pre-COVID-19 record levels of 2019 (Ratha et al. 2020). This loss is driven by both lower rates of migration due to existing migrants being sent home and new migrants unable to depart, as well as decreased remittances from those who remain away (Barker et al. 2020).

It is unclear how long the health effects of the pandemic will last; it will depend on the availability of effective vaccines at a global scale never before deployed. The spotlight at the end of this chapter, “Inequality, Social Cohesion, and the COVID-19 Public Health Crisis at the Nexus of Water and Migration”, draws attention to the history of pandemics and highlights the importance of water-related investments in combating the disease as well as important policy lessons regarding the interplay between poverty, inequality, and social cohesion during such crises.

Impacts on the Forcibly Displaced in the Middle East and North Africa

In the Middle East and North Africa region, the pandemic has had profound implications for the forcibly displaced. Syrian refugees are a case in point, with at least 1.1 million in Lebanon, northern Jordan, and the Kurdistan region of Iraq driven into poverty as a result of the pandemic and related restrictions (Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, World Bank Group, and UNHCR 2020).

Beyond the social and economic impacts, COVID-19 has also highlighted the challenges stemming from preexisting inequalities, such as differences in access to drinking water and water for hygiene, especially among excluded groups such as

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BOX 1.3: COVID-19 (Coronovirus) Fallout continued

migrant populations. Residents of informal settlements that are characterized by crowding and shared water sources and sanitation facilities find themselves in hot spots for contagion and vulnerability (Bhardwaj et al. 2020), while for the forcibly displaced living in camps, access to the levels of water supply and sanitary items that support good hand hygiene is a daily challenge. In the words of Aziza, a Syrian refugee living in Amman who was interviewed as part of this study: “COVID-19 has greatly affected my daily life. My family’s expenditure on detergents, soaps, and sanitizers has doubled.” For others, COVID-19 has meant higher reliance and expenditure on water from tankers. As the world attempts to combat COVID-19 and prepare for future pandemics, Ebb and Flow: Volume 2. Water in the Shadow of Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (Borgomeo et al. 2021) highlights priorities for maximizing the role of water, hygiene, and sanitation interventions in addressing pandemics in the Middle East and North Africa region.

In this volume, the role of water is examined via rainfall shocks (see box 1.4). For analytical purposes, these shocks are measured and characterized in terms of a statistical (that is, a “standard”) deviation of rainfall from its long-term mean. Definitions of floods and droughts vary and often they are context specific, so the deviations analyzed in this report may not always be classified as either a drought or a flood. As an example, moderately wet episodes can boost agricultural productivity and economic growth but an unusually intense downpour may have catastrophic impacts. In addition, the report examines the impact of consecutive shocks. While more attention is paid to responses to catastrophic events, less attention is given to slowermoving effects of climate change such as repeated dry or wet shocks. Because migration and development entail long-term consequences, accounting for the temporal dimension of shocks is equally important.

Addressing the worsening problem of rainfall variability is not a distant challenge for the future. Over the past three decades, 1.8 billion people, or approximately 25 percent of humanity, have endured abnormal rainfall episodes each year, whether it was a particularly wet year or an unusually dry one (Damania et al. 2017). Unfortunately, variability has disproportionately impacted developing nations, with upward of 85 percent of affected people living in low- or middle-income countries (Damania et al. 2017). Many of the world’s poorest countries, which have a disproportionately high dependence on agricultural employment, rapidly expanding populations, and elevated levels of water stress, endure strong variability of rainfall (Hall et al. 2014). Some scholars suggest that since the middle of the 20th century, anthropogenic climate forcing has doubled the joint probability of years that