EVALUATING THE BIDIRECTIONAL NEXUS BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND AGRICULTURE FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Understanding the complex and dynamic nexus between climate change and agriculture has become crucial for our civilization. Thus, this paper aims at estimating the impact of those two concepts on one another using world data spanning from 1980 to 2018. On the one hand, the results show that the rising sea level inherent to climate change has a positive and significant impact on arable land and a negative and significant impact on livestock production. It is also found that rising sea level and global temperature constitute significant obstacles to crop production while a surge in greenhouse gas emissions significantly boosts it. On the other hand, the paper reveals that livestock production significantly increases greenhouse gas emissions while agricultural activities –crop production, livestock production and arable land– are found to have a negative and significant impact on global temperature. Finally, as agriculture is both a cause and a victim of climate change, some adaptation (shift in farming timing, intercropping) and mitigation (carbon sequestration, organic farming) strategies are recommended