Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:10:48.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Climate, crops, and forests: a pan-tropical analysis of household income generation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2018

Sven Wunder Open the ORCID record for Sven Wunder [Opens in a new window] ,
Frederik Noack  and
Arild Angelsen
Sven Wunder*
Affiliation:
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Lima, Peru
Frederik Noack
Affiliation:
Food and Resource Economics Group, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Arild Angelsen
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Ås, Norway
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rural households in developing countries depend on crops, forest extraction and other income sources for their livelihoods, but these livelihood contributions are sensitive to climate change. Combining socioeconomic data from about 8,000 smallholder households across the tropics with gridded precipitation and temperature data, we find that households have the highest crop income at 21°C temperature and 2,000 mm precipitation. Forest incomes increase on both sides of this agricultural maximum. We further find indications that crop income declines in response to weather shocks while forest income increases, suggesting that households may cope by reallocating inputs from agriculture to forests. Forest production may thus be less sensitive than crop production to climatic fluctuations, gaining comparative advantage in extreme climates and under weather anomalies. This suggests that well-managed forests might help poor rural households to cope with and adapt to future climate change.

Keywords

Adaptationagricultureclimate changecopingforestslivelihoods
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 23 , Special Issue 3: Poverty and Climate Change , June 2018 , pp. 279 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angelsen, A, Jagger, P, Babigumira, R, Belcher, B, Hogarth, NJ, Bauch, S, Börner, J, Smith-Hall, C and Wunder, S (2014) Environmental income and rural livelihoods: a global-comparative analysis. World Development 64(S1), S12–S28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Auffhammer, M, Hsiang, SM, Schlenker, W and Sobel, A (2013) Using weather data and climate model output in economic analyses of climate change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 7(2), 181–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baland, J-M and Francois, P (2005) Commons as insurance and the welfare impact of privatization. Journal of Public Economics 89(2), 211–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhattarai, M and Hammig, M (2004) Governance, economic policy, and the environmental Kuznets curve for the natural tropical forests. Environment and Development Economics 9, 367–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brienen, RJW, Phillips, OL, Feldpausch, TR et al. (2015) Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink. Nature 519, 344–348.Google Scholar
Burbidge, JB, Magee, L and Robb, AL (1988) Alternative transformations to handle extreme values of the dependent variable. Journal of the American Statistical Association 83(401), 123–127.Google Scholar
Burke, M and Emerick, K (2016) Adaptation to climate change: evidence from US agriculture. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8(3), 106–140.Google Scholar
Burke, M, Hsiang, SM and Miguel, E (2015) Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production. Nature 527(7577), 235–239.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colmer, J (2017) Weather, Labour Reallocation, and Industrial Production: Evidence From India. Mimeo: University of Virginia, Dept of Economics. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-BakBtoHwF8UjNtU3ZONmdjOTA/view.Google Scholar
Deaton, A (1989) Saving in developing countries: theory and review. The World Bank Economic Review 3(suppl. 1), 61–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delacote, P (2009) Commons as insurance: safety nets or poverty traps? Environment and Development Economics 14(03), 305–322.Google Scholar
Dell, M, Jones, BF and Olken, BA (2012) Temperature shocks and economic growth: evidence from the last half century. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 4(3), 66–95.Google Scholar
Dell, M, Jones, B and Olken, B (2014) What do we learn from the weather? The new climate economy literature. Journal of Economic Literature 52(3), 740–798.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deschênes, O and Greenstone, M (2007) The economic impacts of climate change: evidence from agricultural output and random fluctuations in weather. The American Economic Review 97(1), 354–385.Google Scholar
Emerick, K (2016) Agricultural Productivity and the Sectoral Reallocation of Labor in Rural India. Mimeo: Georgetown University. Available at https://gui2de.georgetown.edu/sites/gui2de/files/documents/ag_india_paper_v3.pdf.Google Scholar
FAO (2000) FRA 2000. On definitions of forest and forest change. Forest Resources Assessment WP 33. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.Google Scholar
Gaure, S (2013) Lfe: linear group fixed effects. The R Journal 5(2), 104–117.Google Scholar
Gotelli, NJ (1998) A Primer of Ecology. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Incorporated.Google Scholar
Hagemann, A (2017) Cluster-robust bootstrap inference in quantile regression models. Journal of the American Statistical Association 112(517), 446–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haile, MG, Wossen, T, Tesfaye, K and von Braun, J (2017) Impact of climate change, weather extremes, and price risk on global food supply. Economics of Disasters and Climate Change 1(1), 55–57. doi:10.1007/s41885-017-0005-2.Google Scholar
Hallegatte, S, Bangalore, M, Bonzanigo, L, Fay, M, Kane, T, Narloch, U, Rozenberg, J, Treguer, D and Vogt-Schilb, A (2016) Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty. Washington, DC: World Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, I, Jones, PD, Osborn, TJ and Lister, DH (2014) Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations – the CRU TS3. 10 dataset. International Journal of Climatology 34(3), 623–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hermans-Neumann, K, Gerstner, K, Geijzendorffer, IR, Herold, M, Seppelt, R and Wunder, S (2016) Why do forest products become less available? A pan-tropical comparison of drivers of forest-resource degradation. Environmental Research Letters 11(12), 125010.Google Scholar
IPCC (2013) Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Isbell, F, Craven, D, Connolly, J, Loreau, M, Schmid, B, Beierkuhnlein, C and Ebeling, A (2015) Biodiversity increases the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate extremes. Nature 526(7574), 574–577.Google Scholar
Koenker, R (2017) Quantile Regression. R package version 5.33. Vienna: R Foundation.Google Scholar
Kurukulasuriya, P, Mendelsohn, R, Hassan, R, Benhin, J, Deressa, T, Diop, M, Eid, HE, Fosu, KY, Gbetibouo, G, Jain, S, Mahamadou, A, Mano, R, Kabubo-Mariara, J, El-Marsafawy, S, Molua, E, Ouda, S, Ouedraogo, M, Séne, S, Maddison, D, Seo, SN and Dinar, A (2006) Will African agriculture survive climate change? The World Bank Economic Review 20(3), 367–388.Google Scholar
Lobell, DB, Schlenker, W and Costa-Roberts, J (2011) Climate trends and global crop production since 1980. Science 333(6042), 616–620.Google Scholar
Locatelli, B, Kanninen, M, Brockhaus, M, Colfer, CJP, Murdiyarso, D and Santoso, H (2008) Facing an Uncertain Future: How Forests and People can Adapt to Climate Change. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR.Google Scholar
Malhi, Y, Roberts, JT, Betts, RA, Killeen, TJ, Li, W and Nobre, CA (2008) Climate change, deforestation, and the fate of the Amazon. Science 319(5860), 169–172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mather, AS, Needle, CL and Fairbairn, J (1999) Environmental Kuznets curves and forest trends. Geography 84(362), 55–65.Google Scholar
MEA (2005) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, R, Nordhaus, WD and Shaw, D (1994) The impact of global warming on agriculture: a ricardian analysis. The American Economic Review 84(4), 753–771.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, R, Basist, A, Kurukulasuriya, P and Dinar, A (2007) Climate and rural income. Climatic Change 81(1), 101–118.Google Scholar
Millar, CI, Stephenson, NL and Stephens, SL (2007) Climate change and forests of the future: managing in the face of uncertainty. Ecological Applications 17, 2145–2151, doi:10.1890/06-1715.1.Google Scholar
Nachtergaele, FO, van Velthuizen, H, Verelst, L, Batjes, NH, Dijkshoorn, JA, van Engelen, VWP and Prieler, S (2008) Harmonized world soil database (version 1.0). FAO, IIASA; ISRIC-World Soil Information; ISS-CAS; EC-JRC.Google Scholar
Nelson, GC, Rosegrant, MW, Palazzo, A, Gray, I, Ingersoll, C, Robertson, R, Tokgoz, S, Zhu, T, Sulser, TB, Ringler, C, Msangi, S and You, L (2010) Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050: Scenarios, Results, Policy Options. IFPRI Research Monographs, vol. 172. Washington, DC: IFPRI.Google Scholar
Nepstad, DC, Stickler, CM, Soares-Filho, B and Merry, F (2008) Interactions among Amazon land use, forests and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363(1498), 1737–1746.Google Scholar
Noack, F, Wunder, S, Angelsen, A and Börner, J (2015) Responses to weather and climate: a cross-section analysis of rural incomes. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 7478.Google Scholar
Nøstbakken, L and Conrad, JM (2007) Uncertainty in bioeconomic modelling. In Weintraub, A, Romero, C, Bjørndal, T and Epstein, R (eds). Handbook of Operations Research in Natural Resources. Boston, MA: Springer, pp. 217–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, JR, Xie, L, Challinor, AJ, Cochrane, K, Howden, SM, Iqbal, MM, Lobell, DB, Travasso, MI (2014) Food security and food production systems. In Field, CB, Barros, VR, Dokken, DJ, Mach, KJ, Mastrandrea, MD and White, LL (eds). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 485–533.Google Scholar
Reed, WJ (1975) A stochastic model for the economic management of a renewable animal resource. Mathematical Biosciences 22, 313–337.Google Scholar
Reed, WJ (1979) Optimal escapement levels in stochastic and deterministic harvesting models. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 6(4), 350–363.Google Scholar
Reed, WJ and Clarke, HR (1990) Harvest decisions and asset valuation for biological resources exhibiting size-dependent stochastic growth. International Economic Review 31, 147–169.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, C and Parry, ML (1994) Potential impact of climate change on world food supply. Nature 367, 133–138.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, MR and Wolpin, KI (1993) Credit market constraints, consumption smoothing, and the accumulation of durable production assets in low-income countries: investments in bullocks in India. Journal of Political Economy 101(2), 223–244.Google Scholar
Schimel, D, Stephens, BB and Fisher, JB (2015) Effect of increasing CO2 on the terrestrial carbon cycle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, 436–441.Google Scholar
Stern, DI (2004) The rise and fall of the environmental Kuznets curve. World Development 32(8), 1419–1439.Google Scholar
Thompson, I, Mackey, B, McNulty, S and Mosseler, A (2009) Forest resilience, biodiversity, and climate change. A synthesis of the biodiversity/resilience/stability relationship in forest ecosystems. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal. CBD Technical Series no. 43.Google Scholar
Thornton, P and Cramer, L (2012) Impacts of Climate Change on the Agricultural and Aquatic Systems and Natural Resources Within the CGIAR's Mandate. CCAFS Working Paper 23. Copenhagen, Denmark: CCAFS.Google Scholar
Wheeler, T and von Braun, J (2013) Climate change impacts on global food security. Science 341, 508–513.Google Scholar
Wunder, S, Angelsen, A and Belcher, B (2014a) Forests, livelihoods, and conservation: broadening the empirical base. World Development 64(Special Supplement: “Forests, Livelihoods, and Conservation”), S1–S11.Google Scholar
Wunder, S, Börner, J, Shively, G and Wyman, M (2014b) Safety nets, gap filling and forests: a global-comparative perspective. World Development 64(suppl. 1), S29–S42.Google Scholar