Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture: Empirical Evidence from South Asian Countries

Human-induced climate change is occurring at a fast rate, and agriculture, for its greater dependence on nature, is the most vulnerable sector to climate change. The rate of global warming has increased, and among the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is mainly responsible for this. It is projected that climate change may adversely affect global food security in this century. South Asia accommodated nearly half (48%) of the World's multidimensional poverty in 2017, and any adverse impact on agriculture will hurt South Asian countries very badly. Among eight South Asian countries, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka together have nearly 99% share of total GDP and 97.8% of the total population of South Asia in 2018. This study attempts to find out the evidence of the impact of climate change on agriculture in South Asia and five selected countries mentioned above based on data collected from the central database of the World Bank for the period of 1960 to 2016. We begin by assuming that CO2 can affect the agricultural value-added and examine whether there is any equilibrium long-run relationship among value added by agriculture, CO2 emissions, land under cultivation of cereal crops, and rainfall using the ARDL bounds test and error correction model. We do not find any evidence of the adverse impact of climate change on agriculture in South Asia and five selected countries.