Jinxia Wang

Overview of Impacts of Climate Change and Adaptation in China's Agriculture

The purpose of this paper is to document the likely impacts of climate change on Chinas agriculture and the current adaptation efforts made by government and farmers. The review of literature shows that climate change will have a significant impact on agriculture, primarily through its effect on crop yields. The extent of predicted impacts highly depends on the crop, the CO2 fertilization effect assumption and adaptation abilities. Market response to the production shocks resulting from climate change will lessen the impacts on agricultural production predicted by natural scientists. On adaptation, the governments major efforts have been in the developing new technologies, reforming extension system and enhancing institutional capacity. Farmers do adapt to climate change, but their adaptation measures cannot fully offset the negative impacts of climate change. The paper concludes and makes implications for future studies.

Impacts of Climate Change on Water and Agricultural Production in Ten Large River Basins in China

The overall goal of this paper is to examine impacts of climate change on water supply and demand balance and their consequences on agricultural production in ten river basins in China. To realize this goal, China Water Simulation Model (CWSM) is used to analyze three alternative climate scenarios (A1B, A2 and B2). The results show that the impacts of climate change on water supply and demand balance differ largely among alternative scenarios. While significant impacts of climate change on water balance will occur under the A1B scenario, the impacts of climate change under the A2 and B2 scenarios will be marginal. Under the A1B scenario, the water shortage in the river basins located in the northern China will become more serious, particularly in Liaohe and Haihe river basins, but the other river basins in the southern China will improve their water balance situations. Despite larger impacts of climate change on water balance in the northern China, its impacts on total crops’ production will be moderate if farmers would be able to reallocate water among crops and adjust irrigated and rainfed land. The paper concludes with some policy implications.

Household and Community Assets and Farmers' Adaptation to Extreme Weather Event: the Case of Drought in China

Under climate change, rising frequency and serious extreme weather events have challenged agricultural production. Designing appropriate adaptation measures to the extreme weather events require rigorous and empirical analysis. The overall goals of this study are to understand physical adaptation measures taken by farmers and the impacts of household and community assets on farmers adaptation when they face drought. The analyses are based on a unique data set collected from a household survey in three provinces in China. The survey results show that though not common on annual basis, some farmers did use physical adaptation measures to fight drought. Regression analysis reveals that both household and community assets significantly affect farmers adaptation behaviors. Improving households social capital and wealth, communities network and access to governments anti-drought service can facilitate farmers adaptation to drought. Results indicate that communitys irrigation infrastructure and physical adaptation taken by farmers can substitute each other. Further analysis shows that the households taking adaptation measures have higher crop yields than those without taking these measures. The paper concludes with several policy implications.

Impacts of climate change on net crop revenue in North and South China

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of climate change on crop net revenue by region. Particularly, the authors focus on the impact differences between north and south regions. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors applied the Ricardian approach which assumes that each farmer wishes to maximize revenue subject to the exogenous conditions of their farm. The climate data are based on actual measurements in 753 national meteorological stations and the socio-economic data covers 8,405 farms across 28 provinces in China. Findings - – On average, the rise of annual temperature will hurt farms both in the north or south. The impacts of climate change on both precipitation and temperatures have different seasonal impacts on producers in the north and the south of China. As a consequence, the impact on net farm revenues varies with farms in the north and the south being adversely affected (to different degrees) by a rise in the temperature, but both benefiting from an anticipated increase in rainfall. The results also reveal that irrigation is one key adaption measure to dealing with climate change. Whether in the north or south of China, increasing temperature is beneficial to irrigated farms, while for rainfed farms, higher temperature will result in a reduction in net revenues. The results also reveal that farms in the north are more vulnerable to temperature and precipitation variation than that in the south. Irrigated farms in the south are more vulnerable to precipitation variation than that in the north; but rainfed farms in the north are more vulnerable to precipitation variation than that in the south. Originality/value - – Applying empirical analysis to identify the differences of climate change impacts between north and south regions will help policy makers to design reasonable adaptation policies for various regions.