Title : Estimation of climate change impacts on sugarcane productivity using vector autoregression (VAR) economic model
Abstract:
Considering the drastic effects of climate change in agriculture sector in Sindh province of Pakistan, a study was carried out to identify the impact variables of climate change on sugarcane productivity using Vector Autoregression (VAR) econometric model. The model analysed the impacts of temperature and precipitation causing the climatic variation. The projected figure for sugarcane production would be 33,987.223 thousand ton while country’s need is approximately 35 thousand tonnes. The intact results of the study screened somewhat negative impacts of climate change on productivity of the sugarcane crop in coming years. The statistical values of t-statistics were not significant enough for study variables on the other hand F-statistics value were higher to make all the lag terms of study model statistically significant. Furthermore, the R-squared values of coefficient of determination for variables were within 0 to 1 which basically showed the integrity of fit in study model. So the VAR study model with lag 2 exclusively because the analysis values of Schwaarz (Sc) and Akaieke (AIC) for the last twenty years time series data using, lag 2 is diminutive than of lag 3, with lag 4 and lag 5 respectively. The smaller values of Schwaarz (Sc) 14.28372 and Akaieke AIC 13.5070 for the lag 2 makes the study model more fitted. Therefore, the VAR study model was found to be suitable. The predicted values for overall sugarcane crop production and its productivity growth rate would be reported as -1.673 and -0.587. Likewise, the parameters of the study were viz β0, β1, β2, β3..... βn. In addition, projected climate change factors affecting sugarcane indicated that the higher temperature and unexpected shifting of weather activities such as unsolicited rainfall, higher temperature had negative impact on production practices and resultantly, the productivity went into uncertainty due to climate change. Overall the 01°C to 01.8°C temperature will be grasp increase and 10% to 18% precipitation will be decrease in the upcoming years up to 2030.
Keywords: Climate Change, Sugarcane, Productivity, Vector Autoregression (VAR), Sindh
