Measuring the economic impact of climate change on agriculture: a Ricardian analysis of farmlands in Tajikistan

Abstract

We apply the Ricardian approach to analyse the economic impact of climate change on agriculture using the 2007 World Bank Tajikistan Living Standards Survey. The study analyses data of 2557 farm households in 166 villages across the 10 agro-ecological country zones. In general, the results indicated that increasing temperature and precipitation will both be damaging to Tajikistan agriculture and consequently to the net revenue (NR) of farmers in the medium and long term. Regressing NR on climate parameters, household and soil variables showed that these variables have a significant impact on the farmers' NR per hectare. We examined the impact of the current climate on farmers' NR per hectare, and how that is affected by future climate scenarios: one +2.9°C warming and one 4.6°C warming scenarios. Although the analysis did not incorporate variables such as the carbon fertilization effect, the role of technology or the change in prices in the future, significant information for policy-making can be extracted. Tajikistan has very diverse regions in terms of geography, population density and socio-economic situation; our results will help policy-makers to anticipate the adaptation effort needed in different locations of the country.