Climate Change – Impacts and Consequences for Food Security in Pakistan

Abstract

Climate change is a phenomenon and it is impacting globally and Pakistan is also being severely impacted due to it. Climate change threatens the national security of the country and impacts the agriculture sector and consequently the food insecurity is caused. This study aims to evaluate the impact of Flood as an indicator of climatic event on agriculture sector in Pakistan and the consequences of climate change with focus on food insecurity. This study focuses on the climatic impact i.e. flood 2022 on the wheat and rice yields of districts of Punjab, Pakistan. The flood occurred in June 2022 and the study uses data of two time periods which is pre and post flood time periods of all 36 districts of Punjab, making our sample size n = 72. The data is gathered from the reports of Bureau of Statistics, Punjab and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and is analysed using quantitative method by running OLS and 2SLS regression estimates. The findings shows that the flood 2022 caused a devastating effect across districts of Punjab. The Rabi crop (wheat) was not affected due to flood but the Kharif crop (rice) was affected due to flood 2022 on a much greater extent as the wheat was already harvested and the occurrence of flood coincided with the rice crop period. Since, the Kharif crop season run from April to September and Rabi crop season run from October to March respectively.