Abstract
AbstractDue to their reliance on rain‐fed agriculture, both as a source of income and consumption, many low‐income countries are considered to be the most vulnerable to climate change. Here, we estimate the impact of climate change on food security in Tanzania. Representative climate projections are used in calibrated crop models to predict crop yield changes for 110 districts in Tanzania. These results are in turn imposed on a highly disaggregated, recursive dynamic economy‐wide model of Tanzania. We find that, relative to a no‐climate‐change baseline and considering domestic agricultural production as the channel of impact, food security in Tanzania appears likely to deteriorate as a consequence of climate change. The analysis points to a high degree of diversity of outcomes (including some favorable outcomes) across climate scenarios, sectors, and regions. Noteworthy differences in impacts across households are also present both by region and by income category.
Highlights
The consequences of climate change for agriculture and food security in developing countries are of serious concern, not least because food supplies are already inadequate and poverty severe in many low-income countries, in Africa
Since our objective is to evaluate the economic implications of climate change for agriculture as a whole and for broadly-defined food security, we employ, an economy-wide model of Tanzania in order to sort through these impacts
The crop modelling results discussed in the previous section are passed down to a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model of mainland Tanzania, which estimates the economic impact of the baseline and climate change scenarios, including indirect or economy-wide linkages between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors
Summary
The consequences of climate change for agriculture and food security in developing countries are of serious concern, not least because food supplies are already inadequate and poverty severe in many low-income countries, in Africa. Previous studies linking climate change to food security have typically used agricultural crop models (see, for example, Parry et al 2004) Their predictions range from precipitous declines in yields for major African food crops (Schlenker and Lobell 2010) to more modest reductions (Lobell et al 2008; Nelson et al 2010), and even to improvements (Butt et al 2005). Four projections are drawn from available general circulation models (GCM) to reflect a range of possible temperature and precipitation changes by mid-century These climate projections are used in calibrated crop models to predict crop yield changes, which are in turn imposed on a highly-disaggregated, dynamic economy-wide model of Tanzania. We conclude by summarizing our results and identifying areas for further research
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