Abstract
Global climate models foresee changes in temperature and precipitation regimes that shift regional climate zones and influence the viability of agricultural market systems. Understanding the influence of climate change on the different sub-sectors and functions of a market system is crucial to increasing the systems’ climate resilience and to ensuring the long-term viability of the sectors. Our research applies a new approach to climate change analysis to better understand the influence of climate change on each step of an agricultural market system—on its core (processing units, storage facilities and sales) and support functions (sapling supply, research, insurance and agricultural policy). We use spatial climate analyses to investigate current and projected changes in climate for different regions in Nepal. We then analyse the risks and vulnerabilities of the sub-sectors banana, charcoal, coffee, macadamia, orange, vegetables and walnut. Our results show that temperatures and precipitation levels will change differently depending on the climatic regions, and that climate change elicits different responses from the market functions both between and within each of the different sub-sectors. We conclude that climate-related interventions in market systems must account for each different market function’s specific response and exposure to climate change, in order to select adaptation measures that ensure long-term climate resilience.
Highlights
In recent decades, the climate has been observed to change and these changes have led to shifts in precipitation regimes and to changes in temperatures [1]
The aim of this research is, to add to the understanding on how climate change influences the agricultural market system using the example of chosen sub-sectors in Nepal and based on the methodology developed by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation [35]
Temperature, for example, is expected to change more strongly in the Northwest compared to the Southeast, while precipitation is expected to increase more in the Central and Southwest compared to the Northwest
Summary
The climate has been observed to change and these changes have led to shifts in precipitation regimes and to changes in temperatures [1]. Wilby and Dawson [3] suggest that a focus on physically meaningful quantities, such as wind speeds, wave heights, phenological and hazard metrics, could improve our understanding of downscaled models These forecasts yield reliable estimates of extreme temperatures, seasonal precipitation totals and areal and inter-site precipitation behaviour, yet data sparse regions in Africa, Asia and South America are under-represented [3]. Changes in micro and macro climates lead to more extreme events, such as droughts and floods, and to changes in seasonal weather patterns [13] These are increasingly affecting agricultural systems and livelihoods in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, where poverty is widespread [14,15,16]. Past studies investigated the influence of climate change on agriculture in Nepal, concluding that, while certain crop yields are predicted to decline under the projected climate changes, others can be expected to thrive by 2050 [18,19,20,21,22]
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