Assessment of the impact of climate change on the productivity of cotton: empirical evidence from cotton zone, southern Punjab, Pakistan

Climate change is one of the venerable factors of the environment. The climate of Punjab is changing over time due to global warming, increasing temperature, melting of glaciers, and changes in the rainfall pattern. Cotton crop is very sensitive and risky to climate change and intensive inputs and huge investment is required for the production of cotton. The research aims to investigate the impact of climate change on the productivity of cotton. The Secondary data was collected from meteorological departments. The general production function that will be used for the analysis where Y is cotton production per hectare, Cl is the vector of climatic indicators including temperature, humidity, and precipitation while NCI is the vector of non-climatic indicators such as fertilizer area under cotton and technological change. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to co-integration was applied for the estimation of long-run relationships and a short-run relationship error correction model was used. For the stability of model CUSUM and CUSUM Q test was applied. ARIMA model was used for forecasting whereas regression analysis was used for impact analysis. Evolving and disseminating cotton varieties having adaptation to climate change should be the focus of future research and development. Improving the practices of farm management, developing awareness among the farmers about climate change, and strengthening the extension department are some measures to be taken for the adaptation to climate change in the cotton zone.