Abstract
Climate volatility could change in the future, with important implications for agricultural productivity. For Tanzania, where food production and prices are sensitive to climate, changes in climate volatility could have severe implications for poverty. This study uses climate model projections, statistical crop models, and general equilibrium economic simulations to determine how the vulnerability of Tanzania's population to impoverishment by climate variability could change between the late 20th Century and the early 21st Century. Under current climate volatility, there is potential for a range of possible poverty outcomes, although in the most extreme of circumstances, poverty could increase by as many as 650,000 people due to an extreme interannual decline in grain yield. However, scenarios of future climate from multiple climate models indicate no consensus on future changes in temperature or rainfall volatility, so that either an increase or decrease is plausible. Scenarios with the largest increases in climate volatility are projected to render Tanzanians increasingly vulnerable to poverty through impacts on staple grains production in agriculture, with as many as 90,000 additional people entering poverty on average. Under the scenario where precipitation volatility decreases, poverty vulnerability decreases, highlighting the possibility of climate changes that oppose the ensemble mean, leading to poverty impacts of opposite sign. The results suggest that evaluating potential changes in volatility and not just the mean climate state may be important for analyzing the poverty implications of climate change.
Highlights
There is substantial evidence that rising atmospheric GHG concentrations are likely to increase temperature and precipitation extremes in the future (IPCC, 2007), with Easterling et al (2000) making the case that greater climate volatility is already occurring
Especially of staple foods like maize, are susceptible to adverse weather events. This threat has been recognized by policy makers, with Tanzania’s National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty identifying droughts and floods as among the primary threats to agricultural productivity and poverty vulnerability
Climate volatility will increase in the future, with agricultural productivity expected to become increasingly volatile as well
Summary
There is substantial evidence that rising atmospheric GHG concentrations are likely to increase temperature and precipitation extremes in the future (IPCC, 2007), with Easterling et al (2000) making the case that greater climate volatility is already occurring These changes to the distribution of climate outcomes in a given year are important for agriculture (White et al, 2006; Mendelsohn et al, 2007). They have implications for developing countries where agriculture is important for the poor as both a source of income as well as for consumption – since the majority of the poor reside in rural areas where farming is the dominant economic activity and because the poor may spend as much as two-thirds of their income on food.
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