Unraveling the complexity! Exploring asymmetries in climate change, political globalization, and food security in the case of Pakistan

Abstract

Climate change and global politics pose potential threats to food security by impacting crop productivity and food availability. Short-term variability resulting from climate change and global politics may disrupt the stability of entire food systems. The regional implications of these factors remain uncertain, prompting this study to investigate the relationship between climate change, global politics, global inflation, and food security. Using time series data spanning from 1981 to 2021, the Non-linear Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (NARDL) approach was used to examine the asymmetric effects of political globalization (proxied by political globalization) and environmental change (proxied by CO2 and Mean Temperature) on food security. Our findings indicate that mean temperature (MT), CO2 emissions, and political globalization (POLG) had an asymmetrical effect on food security as CO2_POS, CO2_NEG, and MT_POS, MT_NEG had a positive relationship with food security while POLG_POS, POLG_NEG had a negative relationship with food security. The current research proposes that Pakistan needs a holistic approach to address climate and food security, including sustainable farming, water management, climate-resilient infrastructure, social safety nets, and local food production. Government subsidies and incentives can encourage heat-tolerant crop cultivation, while international collaboration and alliances are needed to strengthen domestic agriculture, invest in research, implement social safety nets, and manage exchange rate fluctuations.