Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Production in Asian Countries: Evidence from Panel Study

Abstract

Abstract Global warming has been an issue lately in many aspects because it has been in increasing trend since 1980s. Climate change might be a major concern to humanity since it affects many economic sectors as well as different aspects of human life. Negative impacts of climate change on agricultural sector will be especially dangerous since agriculture is directly related to food security and human life. This paper analyzes the impact of climate change on agricultural production in 13 Asian countries from 1998 and 2007. This study estimates a country-level fixed effect (FE) panel model for agricultural production using seasonal climate variables and other input variables. The results show that higher temperatures and more precipitations in summer increase agricultural production while higher fall temperature is harmful in South and Southeast Asia. On the other hand, overall increase in annual temperature decreases agricultural production in Asian countries. Introduction According to previous studies, global warming has been in increasing trend since the1980s although the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4°F in the last 100 years (Mendelshon, 2007). Based on the NOAA and NASA data, the eight warmest years on record have all occurred since 1850 with the warmest year being 2005 since 1998. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS, 2010) has released the report on “Global Surface Temperature Change” recently and concluded that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade and the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C per decade that began in the late 1970s has not decreased or reversed. However, there is surprising absence of the impacts study on climate change (Mendelshon, 2007). A broad concensus among climate scientists based on their research is that there would be drastic temperature increases and change in precipitation patterns. Therefore, climate change might be a major concern to humanity since it affects so many economic sectors as well as different aspects of human life. Negative impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector will be especially dangerous since agriculture is directly related to food security and human health. This paper examines whether increase in temperature negatively affects the agricultural production in Asian countries. If climate change negatively impacts agricultural production, it will cause big problem in world food security because the major agricultural product of the most Asian countries is paddy rice and it is an important dietary component more than half of the world’s human population.