An integrated assessment model for food security under climate change for South Asia

Abstract

The present study develops an integrated assessment model (IAM) for food security under climate change for South Asia. For IAM, initially, an econometric model is estimated that identifies the impact of climate change on crop yields, using the historical relationships between temperature, precipitation, and the production of cereals. Subsequently, future projections have been collected for temperature and precipitation from climate models of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), and the previous econometric model is applied to obtain the implied future cereal yields changes. Then, the yield variations are fed into a multiregional Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model, calibrated to the GTAP 9 database, taking the form of decreases in factor-augmenting productivity of the grains sector. Further, the present study evaluates the effects of climate change on an individual South Asian country. The results indicate that change in climate decreases food production, increases food prices, decreases food consumption, and thus affects the welfare. Trade and fiscal policy responses are investigated to combat the problem of food security. It is revealed that these two policies fail to compensate climate change damage in all the selected South Asian countries.

Keywords: Crop yields; Food consumption; Food prices; Food production; Global trade analysis project; Welfare.