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Abstract
The sharp increase in global food prices during 2007‐2008 has triggered the
awareness of food insecurity problems and their impacts on the low income,
food‐deficit countries many of which are located in the East Asian countries. The
food‐security situation was good in relative terms given that the percentage of
carbohydrates consumed is slightly lower than the world average while proteins and
fats consumption are higher than that of other regions. The food security in East
Asia is largely driven by domestic production performance, and despite the doubling
of import volume during the last decade, Asia remains the least dependent of all
regions on food imports. Nevertheless, the rising energy costs and grain prices
induced by the increasing demand of grains for bio‐fuel exacerbate the
undernourishment of the poor households in the region. While most of the
government interventions focus on short‐term measures such as reducing domestic
food prices through trade or price control, the risk of facing a long‐term food
insecurity still exists which may render national action inadequate and require
multilateral cooperation.
Evidence has shown that agricultural production is rather vulnerable to climate
change, in particular, temperature and precipitation changes. As Matthews et al.
(1995) indicates, the impact of climate change on rice production in Asia is of
particular policy interest considering that rice is the most important component in
millions of Asians’ diet. Seventeen south, south‐east, and east Asian countries
produce 92% of the world total rice supply, among which 90% is consumed in these
regions as well (Matthews et al., 1995). Rice‐growing countries in Asia locate in
different latitudes and the terrain conditions of the rice‐growing areas vary as well.
As such, climate‐change impact on rice production of the Asian countries is quite
diversified and warrants a detailed assessment at regional level.
Here, we present a summary report from a recent study by Lee and Chang (2010)
regarding the impact of climate change on Asia’s rice sector. Our study employs a
multi‐region, multi‐sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model—which also
considers crop suitability and agro‐ecological characteristics—to analyze the
climate‐change impact on global rice market (supply‐side shock through crop yield
change), with the consideration of changes in food demand due to population and
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economic growth. In contrast to Mathews et al. (1995), our study places more
emphasis on the economic side of food security issue regarding rice such as the
effect on prices of rice and other competing food crops that is brought about by
varied changes in rice yield across countries.
We take into account changes in both the supply and demand sides to examine the
impact of climate change by 2020 on the global rice market and food security for
Asian countries should the world is developing as plotted in the IPCC SRES scenario
A2. Among all these concerns, food price is the key. Thus, in addition to the
physical impact of climate change, price‐induced adjustments in food production,
which would affect significantly the reallocation of agricultural land among uses, are
also taken into account. By identifying crop suitability and agro‐ecological features of
land, the economic model we used here can model more realistically the production
responses of rice‐growing countries to climate change, especially when diversity are
found for the rice‐growing countries in their vulnerability to climate change. Food
security of countries located in tropical and sub‐tropical zones may be adversely
affected by climate change and the fluctuations in global food prices thus induced.
The results suggest that among Asian countries, India gets the hardest hit of
climate change in its rice production, and a huge increase in the unit cost of rice
production. Thus India has to rely heavily on imports from the world market to meet
its domestic rice demand. To fill the gap being caused by climate change, China also
has to increase rice imports, with a relatively bigger magnitude than the other Asian
countries. India and China have been the world’s top rice‐growing countries, and
most of their rice production is consumed domestically. Should negative effects of
rice yield occur in these two major rice‐consuming countries, their raised demand for
rice imports may push up global price of rice, and in turn affect regions that are very
much reliant on foreign supply.
Our major finding is that as agricultural trade intensifies, impact of climate
change, be it positive or negative, occurring in one region will spill over into other
regions, through the channels of trade. As such, policy measures aimed to
effectively alleviate food security problem should also take into account the
geographically diverse impact of climate change on crop yield along with the
agricultural trade development related policies.