Assessing the socio-economic impact of climate change on wheat production in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

This study involves the climate change impact assessment of wheat producers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. An extensive farm survey of 150 farms was designed. From study area, three districts, namely, Chitral, D.I. Khan, and Peshawar, were selected through multistage sampling process. Yield simulation from Crop model DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agro Technology Transfer) was used for socio-economic impact assessment. Future climate scenarios were generated by selecting five GCMs from latest CMIP5 family with two RCPs 4.5 and 8.5, at two carbon concentrations of 499ppm and 571ppm, respectively. Yield simulations were analyzed for each GCM. Results of crop model revealed that wheat yield will increase in district Chitral, while in D.I. Khan and Peshawar, yields would be reduced due to climate change. For socio-economic impact assessment, TOA-MD (Trade-Off Analysis for Multi-Dimensional Impact Assessment) version 6 was used. Climate change impacts on poverty, net farm returns, and per capita income were calculated for different scenarios. The analysis was carried out on per-farm basis. The economic model results revealed that climate change has negative impact on wheat producers in D.I. Khan and Peshawar while making wheat producers better off in Chitral. The number of losers ranged from 54 to 66.21% and 50 to 61.99% in D.I. Khan and Peshawar, respectively. Losers are the farmers who would be economically worse off under perturbed climate. With current climate, the observed poverty rate would be 34 to 49 in D.I. Khan while 21.26 to 34.03 in Peshawar. The study recommended need for adaptation strategies to overcome the vulnerabilities of climate change.