The impact of climate change on the resilience of banking systems in selected Sub-Saharan economies

Abstract

Climate change is seen as a peril to the overall financial system, yet this revelation is in its infant stage. On that note, this study investigates the impact of climate change shocks on banking system resilience in selected Sub-Saharan economies. The study relies on a quantitative research method by first employing a Generalized Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) (1,1) model to forecast the volatility series of the climate change variables. Further, the study applies the panel ARDL model to disseminate the long- and short-term associations between the obtained conditional variances of climate change parameters and banking system resilience within a time frame of 1996-2017 for 29 selected economies. The results show that banking systems in SSA are resilient to temperature shocks in the long-term. However, the study finds that the banking systems in SSA are not resilient to both precipitation and greenhouse gas shocks in the long-term. For the short-term impact assessment, the study finds that banking systems in SSA are resilient to only precipitation shocks. The study concludes that banking sectors in SSA should vigorously conduct stress-testing on climate-related financial risks and also design forward-looking strategies as well as climate change risk management procedures in the wake of climate change events.