Understanding the Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Productivity in Pakistan

Abstract

Climate change poses an escalating threat to sustainable development, significantly affecting agricultural productivity and food security. Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2 and 13, which focus on ending hunger, improving nutrition, promoting sustainable agriculture, and addressing climate change, requires urgent action to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate. These goals are closely interlinked, as a stable climate is essential for ensuring food security and sustainable agricultural practices. This study investigates the long-term and short-term effects of climate change on agricultural productivity using time-series data of Pakistan. The findings, based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation, reveal a nonlinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between temperature and agricultural productivity. This suggests that there is an optimal temperature for agricultural productivity, beyond which further warming negatively affects yields. The results are robust across different estimation methods, highlighting the sensitivity of agriculture to rising temperatures. Additionally, climate shocks, such as extreme weather events, have consistently negative and significant impacts on productivity, underscoring the vulnerability of agriculture to these events. However, precipitation shows no statistically significant effect on productivity in the models tested. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) results corroborate these findings, while the Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) analysis reveals an important asymmetry in the impact of climate change on Pakistan's agriculture. Specifically, the analysis shows that temperature increases cause twice the damage as the benefits derived from equivalent temperature decreases. This asymmetric impact challenges conventional models and highlights that the agricultural sector is more vulnerable to warming than previously understood. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted heat management strategies and the incorporation of asymmetric climate risks into planning efforts. As climate variability, extreme events, and their severity continue to increase, proactive adaptation measures are essential to safeguard Pakistan's agricultural productivity and ensure food security in the face of climate change.