The impacts of climate change factors and innovative capabilities on food production in Algeria: evidence from ARDL model

The Paris Agreement stands as a landmark in global economies’ commitment to accelerate their sustainable transition and promote food security. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change are high on the agenda of both policymakers and researchers who increasingly acknowledge the criticality of innovative measures to support those efforts. However, it is still unclear how climate change factors and innovative capabilities affect food production in the long run, especially for developing countries, which are most threatened by climate change. Using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration approach, this study evaluates the long-run effects of climate change and innovative capabilities on food production in Algeria over the period 1970–2019. To do so, food production is posited as a function of a set of climate change variables (CO2 emissions, mean temperatures, and mean precipitations) and innovative capabilities (human and physical capital). The novelty of this approach helps to tease out the distinct effects of these factors on food production, both in the long run and the short run. The results not only support the presence of long-run relationships between the variables but also show that, while precipitations, human capital, and physical capital positively affect food production, temperatures have a negative relationship with food production. Moreover, CO2 emissions do not appear to have a long-run effect on food production, at least not directly. In the short run, results confirm that food production is positively related to precipitation and stock of physical capital. Results from this study thus suggest that mitigating climate change impacts and ensuring food security, especially in developing countries, will require investments in agricultural innovation.