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Impact of climate change on Pakistan will likely to have a large cost on agricultural productivity, which can amount to Rs 30,000 per acre, revealed a report by the world Wide Funds for Nature Pakistan.
The report titled 'climate change adaptation in the Indus Ecoregion: a micro-econometric study of the determinants, impact and cost effectiveness of adaptation strategies' was launched by WWF-P on Wednesday. It was produced in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Lahore University of Management Sciences.
The study talks about the impact of the climate change on Pakistan's agriculture and food security and addresses the optimal public policy response to the climate change cost and urges adaptation to this change that could help improve crop resilience to temperature and rainfall variations.
One of the key findings is that the climate change could have a large cost on the agricultural productivity in Pakistan, in particular by the year 2040, assuming a 0.5 degrees Celsius increase in average nation-wide temperatures an eight-10 percent loss is expected across all crops corresponding to Rs 30,000 per acre.
The findings also suggest the productivity of cotton and wheat crops (but not rice) can be increased by up to 49-52 percent if five on-farm adaptation measures are carried out. Such gains are possible for those farmers who are currently not applying these measures, approximately half of all farmers in the Sindh and Punjab provinces.
In his speech during the launching ceremony, Ali Dehlavi, an author of the study and environmental and resource economist, urges a relatively low cost roll out of state sponsored climate field schools in which on-farm adaptation measures are taught.
"The schools will equip participants with the knowledge of climate resilient methods within tillage, agro-chemical input use, and crop husbandry and irrigation. The cost of roll out for Punjab and Sindh will be affordable and limited to five agro-climatic zones [excluding rice belts in western Sindh and eastern Punjab]," he added.
He also said the public expenditure on training of farmers was a low-lying fruit. "Such expenditures are far lower and have higher return on equity than expenses such canal lining to reduce existing water losses and building of new storage reservoirs. Water supply expenditure in contrast to farmer training programmes is a significant drain on public resources.
Previous research argues that to bring about a one percent increase in crop productivity across Pakistan requires the addition of 0.47 billion cubic meter of water. WWF-P believes that its latest crop-specific research merits serious consideration in terms of taxpayers' value for money," he said.
Ahmad Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and a co-author of a political economy study of the climate change, water- and food-security prepared by the LUMS in collaboration with the WWF-P, said the recent 18th Amendment had changed the regulatory framework completely.
"Previously, with the responsibility of preparing and implementing climate policy resting in the Ministry of Environment, policy-making was an easily identifiable responsibility.
After the 18th amendment several subjects, including environment, natural ecology, health, food production and agriculture, have devolved to the provinces, but that provincial governments, especially Sindh and Punjab, have taken no measures to devise their own climate adaptation policies.
"The provinces are just as responsible for ensuring water-and food-security as the federal government, but there appears no sense of the urgency to respond to the magnitude of the challenge."
WWF-P Director General Hammad Naqi Khan said, "Pakistan ranks among the top 10 countries vulnerable to the climate change. Since Pakistan's economy depends completely on agriculture, and this report highlights that our agrarian economy will get affected by it.
In order to decrease these impacts, it is extremely important that we include climate change adaptation in our agriculture extension programmes and train our farmers to faces these challenges."
The Canada-based International Development Research Centre funded the study while WWF-P economists in collaboration with LSE economists conducted the study.
The unprecedented nature of the study relates to the application of 20 plus years of monthly average rainfall and temperature data, provided by the Pakistan Meteorological Department, at a 25 km grid resolution to a representative sample of farmers across Punjab and Sindh. The micro-econometric techniques applied to Pakistan's agricultural productivity are also new and include a so-called Hedonic analysis and counterfactual analysis for non-adapters.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2015

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