An analysis of crop choice: Adapting to climate change in South American farms

This paper explores how South American farmers adapt to climate by changing crops. We develop a multinomial logit model of farmer's choice of crops. Estimating the model across 949 farmers in seven countries, we find that both temperature and precipitation affect the crops that South American farmers choose. Farmers choose fruits and vegetables in warmer locations and wheat and potatoes in cooler locations. Farms in wetter locations are more likely to grow rice, fruits, potatoes, and squash and in dryer locations maize and wheat. Global warming will cause South American farmers to switch away from maize, wheat, and potatoes towards squash, fruits and vegetables. Predictions of the impact of climate change on net revenue must reflect not only changes in yields per crop but also crop switching.     

The Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture: Findings from Households in Vietnam

This paper examines farm household-level impacts of climate change by examining the relationship between climatic variables and Vietnamese agricultural output. The Ricardian technique is applied with panel data which accounts for both adaptation strategies and household characteristics. This study proposes a two-stage Hsiao model to correct for collinearity between climatic variables and individual effects. The results show that in the dry season, increases in temperatures are beneficial to all farms in the warmer southern regions, while increases in precipitation will damage only irrigated farms in the Central and South regions. The impact of higher temperature in the wet season is similar, except that it will negatively affect net revenue of irrigated farms in the long run. More rainfall in the wet season will increase net revenue in the North region only. Finally, this study combines the estimated results with future climate scenarios to predict how future changes in climate will affect farmers on aggregate.     

Economywide impacts of climate change on agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa

Two possible adaptation scenarios to climate change for Sub-Saharan Africa are analyzed under the SRES B2 scenario. The first scenario doubles the irrigated area in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, compared to the baseline, but keeps total crop area constant. The second scenario increases both rainfed and irrigated crop yields by 25% for all Sub-Saharan African countries. The two adaptation scenarios are analyzed with IMPACT, a partial equilibrium agricultural sector model combined with a water simulation module, and with GTAP-W, a general equilibrium model including water resources. The methodology combines the advantages of a partial equilibrium approach, which considers detailed water-agriculture linkages, with a general equilibrium approach, which takes into account linkages between agriculture and nonagricultural sectors and includes a full treatment of factor markets. The efficacy of the two scenarios as adaptation measures to cope with climate change is discussed. Due to the limited initial irrigated area in the region, an increase in agricultural productivity achieves better outcomes than an expansion of irrigated area. Even though Sub-Saharan Africa is not a key contributor to global food production (rainfed, irrigated or total), both scenarios help lower world food prices, stimulating national and international food markets.     

Climate change, irrigation, and Israeli agriculture: Will warming be harmful?

This paper utilizes a Ricardian model to test the relationship between annual net revenues and climate across Israeli farms. The study finds that it is important to include the amount of irrigation water available to each farm in order to measure the response of farms to climate. With irrigation water omitted, the model predicts climate change is strictly beneficial. However, with water included, the model predicts that only modest climate changes are beneficial while drastic climate change in the long run will be harmful. Using the AOGCM Scenarios we show that farm net revenue is expected to increase. Although Israel has a relatively warm climate a mild increase in temperature is beneficial due to the ability to supply international markets with farm product early in the season.     

Political structure as a legacy of indirect colonial rule: Bargaining between national governments and rural elites in Africa

Alliances between national governments and rural elites are observed in postcolonial Africa. Governments rely on rural elites to control rural regions, guaranteeing them a degree of authority and revenue in return. This paper provides a model to analyze the forging of such alliances. Without cooperation between the national government and rural elite, the power of the two competing authorities to compel farmers’ obedience determines the revenue of the government extracted from cash crop production. Hence, with a powerful rural elite, the national government has a weak bargaining position and agrees to a large transfer to the rural elite. Furthermore, the government’s capacity to compel rural residents’ obedience is endogenously determined by the level of cash crop production and the power of rural elites. Because indirect colonial rule is a significant source of the elite control over residents in rural areas, cross-regional variations in colonial policies lead to various forms of postcolonial alliances between African national governments and rural elites.     

Economic and Welfare Impacts of Climate Change on Developing Countries

The impact of global climate change on developing countries is analyzed using CGE-multimarket models for three archetype economies representing the poor cereal importing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The objective is to compare the effects of climate change on the macroeconomic performance, sectoral resource allocation, and household welfare across continents. Simulations help identify those underlying structural features of economies which are the primary determinants of differential impacts; these are suggestive of policy instruments to countervail undesirable effects. Results show that all these countries will potentially suffer income and production losses. However, Africa, with its low substitution possibilities between imported and domestic foods, fares worst in terms of income losses and the drop in consumption of low income households. Countervailing policies to mitigate negative effects should focus on integration in the international market and the production of food crops in Africa, and on the production of export crops in Latin America and Asia.     

Global warming and livestock husbandry in Kenya: Impacts and adaptations

This paper examines the economic impact of climate change on livestock production in Kenya. We estimate a Ricardian model of net livestock incomes and further estimate the marginal impacts of climate change. We also simulate the impact of different climate scenarios on livestock incomes. The Ricardian results show that livestock production in Kenya is highly sensitive to climate change and that there is a non-linear relationship between climate change and livestock productivity. The estimated marginal impacts suggest modest gains from rising temperatures and losses from increased precipitation. The predictions from atmospheric ocean general circulation models suggest that livestock farmers in Kenya are likely to incur heavy losses from global warming. The highest and lowest losses are predicted from the Hadley Centre Coupled model (HADCM) and Parallel Climate Model (PCM) respectively, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A2 Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The paper concludes that in the long term, climate change is likely to lead to increased poverty, vulnerability and loss of livelihoods. Several policy interventions are recommended to counter this impact.     

An integrated analysis of the effects of local water institutions on irrigated agriculture outcomes in the arid western United States

Irrigation water rights and their governance structures constitute the foundation of local water institutions and profoundly influence water resource allocations, irrigated agricultural productivity and other consumptive water uses in the arid climate zones. This article explores the regional structures of irrigation water rights and water governance and empirically analyses the priority effects of water rights on irrigated agriculture at the micro level in Idaho, an arid and semiarid state in the western United States. We integrate a unique data set of water rights and water supplies with agricultural features and environmental characteristics into our empirical analysis. Results indicate that seniority in water resources allocation has significant, positive effects on both the average crop revenue and crop water use efficiency. Local water rights structures differ significantly in seniority and water sources from region to region. In response to the heterogeneity in local water rights structures, the aforementioned effect of allocative priority of water rights on average crop revenue per hectare and crop water productivity varies significantly, reaching up to an 87% difference, when measured across regions. In addition, the priority effects of water rights are nonlinear, which reflects the influence of historical patterns of water rights establishment on water institutions to date.     

Cigarette demand and tax policy for race groups in South Africa

This paper calculates cigarette demand for race groups in South Africa. Elasticities are the most important information a tax policy analyst can have. Elasticities determine how the tax base will change with a change in the tax rate and thus how government revenues will respond to the tax. Elasticities also determine the excess burden that consumers will bear as a result of the tax. As such, own price, crossprice, and expenditure elasticities are calculated along with government revenue maximizing tax rates, and total and excess burdens. Parametric and semiparametric estimation techniques are used and compared. Results show that a tax on cigarettes will discourage nonsmokers from starting to smoke and mainly raise revenue from current smokers. Furthermore, it is found that consumption behaviours between groups are different implying different government revenue maximizing tax rates for each group affecting the distribution of income.     

Powering economic growth and development in Africa: telecommunication operations

This study investigates the effect of telecommunication operations on economic growth and development in selected African countries. The analysis considers a panel of 46 African countries from 2000 to 2015. To measure economic growth, real gross domestic product serves as the proxy, while economic development is measured by the Human Development Index, and telecommunication operations by a composite index of telecommunication computed from mobile line, fixed/CDM line and Internet access penetration via principal component analysis. The physical capital stock is measured by gross fixed capital formation, level of employment by the employment to population ratio, human capital development by enrolment in secondary education for both sexes and technology transfer by net inflows of foreign direct investment in Africa. The empirical results suggest that telecommunication operations promote economic growth and development in Africa. These results imply that for every positive expansion in telecommunication operations and physical capital stock, aggregate output and standard of living will adjust positively in Africa. Thus, an appropriate policy to improve overall investment in Africa and most especially in the telecommunication sector since the spillover effect cut across other sectors and the general economic performance.     

Changing the Tax Mix

A tax mix change, including a component of the Australian tax reforms, involves a net increase in taxation of consumption and a net decrease in income taxation. If the tax mix change is approximately aggregate revenue neutral and retains current vertical equity, the new income tax rate schedule must be more progressive than the current schedule. The Australian proposal involves a revenue shortfall and some erosion of vertical progressivity. For the large proportion of households who save very little, the tax mix change has negligible effects on incentives and efficiency, and on total tax paid.     

Reducing climate change impacts on agriculture: Global and regional effects of mitigation, 2000–2080

What are the implications for agriculture of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions? By when and by how much are impacts reduced? Where does it matter most? We investigated these questions within the new A2 emission scenario, recently developed at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis with revised population and gross domestic product projections. Coupling an agro-ecological model to a global food trade model, two distinct sets of climate simulations were analyzed: 1) A non-mitigated scenario, with atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over 800 ppm by 2100; and 2) A mitigation scenario, with CO₂ concentrations stabilized at 550 ppm by 2100. Impacts of climate change on crop yield were evaluated for the period 1990–2080, then used as input for economic analyses. Key trends were computed over the 21st century for food demand, production and trade, focusing on potential monetary (aggregate value added) and human (risk of hunger) impacts. The results from this study suggested that mitigation could positively impact agriculture. With mitigation, global costs of climate change, though relatively small in absolute amounts, were reduced by 75–100%; and the number of additional people at risk of malnutrition was reduced by 80–95%. Significant geographic and temporal differences were found. Regional effects often diverged from global net results, with some regions worse off under mitigation compared to the unmitigated case.     

Gardens of Eden or Hearts of Darkness? The Genealogy of Discourses on Environmental Insecurity and Climate Wars in Africa

This article argues that the securitisation of Africa’s environment and climate in the early twenty-first century has less to do with multidisciplinary inquiry into the complexities of climate change, development and conflict, and more with historically established paradigms of thinking about Africa, its ecosystems and notions of disorder and violence. Securitisation is the result of a specific moment in the post–Cold War era with its particular geopolitical configuration and of deeply embedded modes of imagining the African continent, its peoples and their relationship with the environments they inhabit. The main objective of this article is to historicise and politicise the prevailing dystopian discourse about climate-induced insecurity. I show that the assumptions and chains of causality that constitute today’s climate wars narrative are remarkably similar in nature to the environmental narratives that underpinned imperialist and post-independence discourses on environment and development, legitimising highly authoritarian interventions against local populations by governments.     

Determinants of technical efficiency of crop and livestock farms in Poland

Poland, one of the candidate countries for European Union membership, is currently experiencing acute structural problems within its agriculture sector. This article analyses technical efficiency and its determinants for a panel of individual farms in Poland specialized in crop and livestock production in 2000. Technical efficiency is estimated with stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and confidence intervals are constructed. Determinants of inefficiency are also evaluated. The SFA results are compared with results using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). On average, livestock farms are more technically efficient than crop farms. For both specializations, the size–efficiency relationship is positive, that is large farms are more efficient. The SFA findings are generally supported by the DEA results. Soil quality and the degree of integration with downstream markets are highly important determinants of efficiency. The use of factor markets (land and labour) is important for crop farms, while livestock farms can rely on family labour and own land. Also, education is a constraint to efficiency particularly for crop farms.     

The Impact of Exporting and Export Destination on Manufacturing Wages: Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates wage effects of trade status of African firms. Using data for manufacturing firms, we find a positive overall association between individual earnings and export status. Moreover, the skill wage premium in exporting firms is significantly higher. These results are consistent with either trade inducing higher wages in the exporting country, or with more productive (higher wage) firms self‐selecting into exporting. The results are not robust, however, to disaggregation by export destination. Exporting to outside Africa generates a negative wage premium whereas exporting to African markets yields a positive premium in export firms of the exporting country. This suggests that there is a disciplining effect on the wages of exporting firms only when exporting is to more competitive markets.     

A comparison of alternative technologies to de-carbonize Canada's passenger transportation sector

Using a full systems model of Canada's economy, six alternative scenarios to de-carbonize the personal passenger vehicle fleet are compared to a business as usual non de-carbonized scenario in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, trade disposition of energy commodities, and the physical resources required for energy production. Three scenarios are analyzed to compare the impacts of increasing either ethanol 85, hydrogen, or electricity powered vehicles into the vehicle fleet, with each starting to penetrate the light vehicle stock in 2010 to reach 100% of the new vehicle market by 2050. For each of these three scenarios, we then construct a variant scenario that considers the additional effects of de-carbonizing electricity production. With a de-carbonized electricity sector, net emission reductions are 29% for ethanol 85, and 31% for both hydrogen and electricity. When considering the transportation sector only, net emission reductions equal 13% for ethanol 85, and 14% for hydrogen and electricity. However, although the ethanol scenario results in the lowest reduction in total emissions, it has significant impacts on other parts of the physical resource base. By the time ethanol reaches 5% of the fuel mix in 2015, domestic consumption of grains increases by 20%, in turn impacting crop trade disposition. At this point, emissions are reduced by less than 0.5%, owing to the fossil fuels required since most ethanol is still grain based. By 2050 it is projected that almost all ethanol will be cellulose based, generating a more significant emission reduction but in turn requiring potentially unsustainable amounts of crop residue.     

Getting the Resilience Right: Climate Change and Development Policy in the ‘African Age’

ABSTRACT

Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank’s Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilience must respectively be strengthened, empowered and enabled in order for African countries to withstand climate change impacts. In this paper we subject this new climate-resilient development discourse to critical scrutiny. Using the theoretical lens of post-politics, we caution how the ill-defined category of resilience is deployed to reinforce a profoundly depoliticising agenda in which climate change is posited as an external threat to an otherwise seamless narrative of African advancement. In so doing, we illustrate how the Bank obscures the contested histories of African development and uses the discourse of climate-resilient development to perpetuate its neoliberal agenda within the continent.     

Converging on Disaster: Climate Security and the Malthusian Anticipatory Regime for Africa

Malthus’s privileging of population growth as the main cause of poverty, scarcity and war still resonates widely in both the public policy arena and popular culture. It shapes dominant discourses about the relationship between climate change, conflict and security in Africa. This article examines what I call the Malthusian Anticipatory Regime for Africa (MARA). MARA represents the convergence of current international strategies for reducing high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa through long-acting female contraception with climate conflict narratives that blame environmental degradation on population pressure and portray young African men as a security threat. Together these serve as a powerful gendered rationale for Western humanitarian and military interventions. MARA also plays a role in justifying the new land enclosures on the continent. How can critical scholarship more effectively challenge MARA and intervene in the politics of anticipating the future?     

Farm-level Autonomous Adaptation of European Agricultural Supply to Climate Change

The impact of climate change on European agriculture is subject to a significant uncertainty, which reflects the intertwined nature of agriculture. This issue involves a large number of processes, ranging from field to global scales, which have not been fully integrated yet. In this study, we intend to help bridging this gap by quantifying the effect of farm-scale autonomous adaptations in response to changes in climate. To do so, we use a modelling framework coupling the STICS generic crop model to the AROPAj microeconomic model of European agricultural supply. This study provides a first estimate of the role of such adaptations, consistent at the European scale while detailed across European regions. Farm-scale autonomous adaptations significantly alter the impact of climate change over Europe, by widely alleviating negative impacts on crop yields and gross margins. They significantly increase European production levels. However, they also have an important and heterogeneous impact on irrigation water withdrawals, which exacerbate the differences in ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations among climate change scenarios.     

Global Warming and German Agriculture Impact Estimations Using a Restricted Profit Function

This study uses the concept of shadow prices formeasuring the impacts of climate change. By estimatinga restricted profit function rather than a cost or aproduction function the explanatory power of the modelis increased because of an endogenous outputstructure. Using low aggregated panel data on WesternGerman farmers, the results imply that the agricultural production process is significantly influenced by climate conditions. Simulation results using a 2 ×CO₂ climate scenario show positive impactsfor all regions in Germany. Interestingly, the spatialdistribution of the gains is indicating no advantagefor those regions, which currently suffer frominsufficient temperature. Finally, the importance ofan endogenous output structure is confirmed by thefinding that the desired product mix will drasticallychange.