An assessment of integrated climate change impacts on the agricultural economy of Egypt.

摘要

The study uses a quadratic programming sector model to assess the integrated impacts of climate change on the agricultural economy of Egypt. Results from a dynamic global food trade model were used to update the Egyptian sector model and included socioeconomic trends and world market prices of agricultural goods. In addition, the impacts of climate change from three bio-physical sectors (water resources, crop yields, and land resources) were used as inputs to the economic model. The climate changescenarios generally had minor impacts on aggregated economic welfare (sum of Consumer and Producer Surplus or CPS), with the largest reduction of approximately 6%. In some climate change scenarios, CPS slightly improved or remained unchanged. These scenarios generally benefited consumers more than producers, as world market conditions reduced the revenue generating capacity of Egyptian agricultural exporters but decreased the costs of imports. Despite increased water availability and only moderate yielddeclines, several climate change scenarios showed producers being negatively affected by climate change. The analysis supports the hypothesis that smaller food importing countries are at a greater risk to climate change, and impacts could have as much to do with changes in world markets as with changes in local and regional biophysical systems and shifts in the national agricultural economy.