Flood vulnerability and deforestation: A case study of North Korea

This study aims to examine the relationship between flood damage and forest cover in North Korea in order to provide an insight for both climate change adaptation and mitigation. North Korea in fact, has been experiencing severe losses and damages from natural disasters, especially from floods for many years.

The analysis of this study showed a linear relationship between flood vulnerability and deforestation. Maximising ecosystem services from the forest is a way to prevent flood damages. Since the forest is the nature’s storage of carbon dioxide, which is the major greenhouse gas, preventing deforestation and restoring the damaged forest ecosystem is a desirable and recommendable approach to climate change mitigation according to the author.

This document is an input paper of the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.