Climate change and food security of South Asia: fresh evidence from a policy perspective using novel empirical analysis

This study is the first effort to assess the long-term effects of change in climate on crop production in South Asian countries from 1991 to 2016 by employing the second-generation methods robust to cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity. Using panel data with the panel dynamic least squares (PD-LS) method and several co-integration approaches, this study confirmed a long-term co-integration among considered variables. The long-run estimates revealed that climatic variables, including temperature and CO2 emissions, negatively affected crop production, suggesting that a 1% increase in temperature and CO2 emissions reduces crop production by 1.93% and 0.32%, respectively. Conversely, precipitation positively affects crop production in the long-run, indicating that a 1% surge in precipitation increases crop production by 0.52%. Moreover, non-climatic variables including cultivated area, income level, and financial development positively affected crop production in the long-run. Furthermore, a 1% surge in cultivated area, income level, and financial development enhances crop production by 0.29%, 0.13%, and 0.04%, respectively. The outcomes of the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test confirmed that the causal link among all variables is significant, and outcomes verify the previous findings. This study suggests that urgent attention should be given to various adaptation strategies, such as credit supply, cropped area expansion, irrigation infrastructure enhancement, and the introduction of improved kinds of major food crops to enhance agricultural productivity. Besides, agricultural extension authorities should provide information about climate change to farming communities to deal with the adverse impacts of sudden climate changes on productivity.