Paper short abstract:

Unsolicited events of climate change have brought grave challenges for sustainable food security in developing countries. This study aims to assess the likely impact of climate change on food security status of rural households across different regions in Pakistan using vulnerability analysis model.

Paper long abstract:

The higher risk of exposure to climate change in rural areas makes a rural household more likely to be vulnerable to food insecurity with limited adaptive and mitigation capacity. This study primarily focuses on dynamic and forward-looking vulnerability model that takes into account ex-ante risk of a household to fall below the food poverty threshold in near future. Empirically, the study investigates the effect of climate change on value of agricultural production and thereby, on food security level of household in Pakistan using Climate Change Impact Survey 2013. For this, 20 years long term averages of temperature and precipitation as a measure of climate change are combined with household survey data from rural areas of 16 districts across the country. Firstly, the quantitative results suggest that uncertain changes in climate significantly impact value of agricultural production measured as farm income, subsequently affecting household’s food consumption while controlling for various socio-economic household characteristics. Secondly, the expected food consumption and its variance are then used to measure probability distribution of households to be food vulnerable in near future. By considering both the current food security status and likely changes in level of food security in near future, households are classified into four different categories of food security level and vulnerability i.e., chronic food poor, temporary food poor, permanent as well as transient food secure households. Such classification of households is important from policy viewpoint to improve allocation of resources and to avoid errors of inclusion or exclusion during food policy intervention.