Climate Changes and its Impact on the Agriculture Sector in Selected South Asian Countries

Abstract

This study depicts an inclusive estimation of climate variation and its effects on agriculture sector in the selected South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri-Lanka) over the period of 1990-2014. Agriculture sector plays vigorous role in the economy of selected South Asian states because more than 60% people work in this sector. The rapid growth of industrialization and weather variation causes the raise of the temperature level by which reduce production of agriculture crops and the people face heavy losses. Therefore, main objective of this study is to detect the influence of the global weather variation in agriculture sector of  selected South Asian countries. Agriculture sector is used as dependent variable. CO₂ emission, gross capital formation, labor force and temperature are used as explanatory variables. Auto regressive distributed lag model is employed to examine the influence of climate variation on the agricultural sector. For analysis panel data were collected from selected South Asian countries. The existence of the short and long term relationship between dependent and independent variables is also assessed by this model. Thus, findings show the climate variation has significant effect on the agricultural sector. In a policy recommendation, government should use sector-wise policies and friendly environmental policies which minimize the negative effect of climate change.