Climate change adaptation and its impacts on farm income and downside risk exposure

Abstract

Multiple previous reports have established that climate change disproportionately impacts smallholder farmers in developing countries. This study investigates the impact of climate change adaptation, defined by farmers’ decisions to adopt the improved practices to mitigate or reduce the effects of climate change, on crop revenue and revenue risk exposure. We employ the control function approach in an endogenous switching regression framework to account for selection bias. Using the household survey data from Nepal, we find that climate change adaptation positively affects crop revenue and revenue risk reduction. Specifically, climate change adaptation leads to a 21.6% increase in farm revenue and a 6.4% reduction in downside risk exposure, which are robust to several specifications. Counterfactual analysis shows the considerable heterogeneities in the outcomes among adapters and non-adapters. In particular, adapting farm households realize substantial and distinguishable gains in revenues and declines in risk levels relative to their non-adapting peer households. Our findings imply that adapting to climate change can be an effective management practice to mitigate the risks associated with climate change and increase resilience.