Two Essays On Climate Change And Agriculture

Agriculture and climate changes are closely linked. Agriculture has a significant impact on the process of climate change. There is uncertainty surrounding the implications of climate change for agricultural production. This document consists of two studies on this relationship. The first study provides an analysis of the various methodologies that have been used to measure the potential impacts of climate change on agricultural production and makes suggestions for further research. The second study is on the impact of agriculture on climate. It gives a detailed analysis of the potential for implementing the Clean Development Mechanism proposed under the Kyoto Protocol Convention on Climate Change in the agricultural sector of developing countries along with the relevant policy implications and requirements

The specific focus of this seminal work is on the economic impact of climate change on agriculture world wide, and how faced with the resultant environmental alterations, agriculture might adapt under varied and varying conditions. Enhanced with a detailed and comprehensive index, Climate Change and Agriculture is highly recommended for academic library environmental studies and economic studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists. The Midwest Book Review Despite its great importance, there are surprisingly few economic studies of the impact of climate on agriculture and how agriculture can adapt under a variety of conditions. This book examines 22 countries across four continents, including both developed and developing economies. It provides both a good analytical basis for additional work and solid results for policy debate concerning income distributional effects such as abatement, adaptation, and equity. Agriculture and grazing are a central sector in the livelihood of many people, particularly in developing countries. This book uses the Ricardian method to examine the impact of climate change on agriculture. It also quantifies how farmers adapt to climate. The findings suggest that agriculture in developing countries is more sensitive to climate than agriculture in developed countries. Rain-fed cropland is generally more sensitive to warming than irrigated cropland and cropland is more sensitive than livestock. The adaptation to climate change results reveal that farmers make many adjustments including switching crops and livestock species, adopting irrigation, and moving between livestock and crops. The results also reveal that impacts and adaptations vary a great deal across landscapes, suggesting that adaptation policies must be location specific. Finally, the book suggests a research agenda for the future. Economists in academia and the public sector, policy analysts and development agencies will find this broad study illuminating.

Climate change is the biggest challenge agriculture faces. Part 1 of this collection reviews current research on the impacts of climate change on agriculture. Part 2 assesses what we know about the contribution of agriculture to climate change, whilst Part 3 surveys mitigation strategies to achieve a more 'climate-smart' agriculture.

In the last half decade since sustainable development became a serious objective, what have we achieved? Are livelihoods more secure? Are nations wealthier and more resilient? Is environmental quality being restored or maintained? These are essential questions of development. Their answers are many, varied between communities and regions, even between individuals. Two years ago, in the aftermath of the Earth Summit and ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but before the first Conference of Parties, I participated in a panel at the inaugural Oxford Environment Conference on Climate Change and World Food Security. The panel vigorously reviewed issues of resilient development and food security. This book is a product of the Oxford Environment Conference. It takes the essential questions of sustainability as a starting point to focus on present food security and its future prospects in the face of climate change. Why is this book important? First, I believe our goals to end hunger are under threat. We know what to do in many respects, but fail to generate the finances and political will to change the structures that thrive on poverty. Second, I believe concern about the environment has become dangerously separated from the fundamental issues of human deprivation. Third, I believe climate change is a serious threat and I am dismayed at the way nations dither over how to control greenhouse gas emissions and mechanisms to meet the challenge of adverse climate impacts.

Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world’s poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data. This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate’s effects on food security. In explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

This book provides an overview of climate change in India using river basin data and analytical and econometric methods. It, first, makes a quantitative assessment of how climate change affects agricultural and food production systems; second, predicts how these systems may respond to climate change; and third, suggests adaptation measures and strategies to improve the income of farmers, increase production, save water and conserve environment.The work will be greatly useful to policy-makers, researchers and teachers of agricultural economics, environmental studies and economics and development studies as also to research organizations dealing with climate modelling and resource management.

Abstract: This study uses the Ricardian approach to analyze the impact of climate change on Ethiopian agriculture and to describe farmer adaptations to varying environmental factors. The study analyzes data from 11 of the country's 18 agro-ecological zones, representing more than 74 percent of the country, and survey of 1,000 farmers from 50 districts. Regressing of net revenue on climate, household, and soil variables show that these variables have a significant impact on the farmers' net revenue per hectare. The study carries out a marginal impact analysis of increasing temperature and changing precipitation across the four seasons. In addition, it examines the impact of uniform climate scenarios on farmers' net revenue per hectare. Additionally, it analyzes the net revenue impact of predicted climate scenarios from three models for the years 2050 and 2100. In general, the results indicate that increasing temperature and decreasing precipitation are both damaging to Ethiopian agriculture. Although the analysis did not incorporate the carbon fertilization effect, the role of technology, or the change in prices for the future, significant information for policy-making can be extracted.