Autonomous adaptations to climate change and rice productivity: a case study of the Tanahun district, Nepal

ABSTRACT

A key issue arising from farmers’ climate change adaptation practices in agriculture is whether autonomous adaptations improve crop production and productivity. A comparison of crop productivity between farms employing autonomous adaptations and those not adopting provides an empirical means of resolving this question. This study assesses the climate change adaptation practices used by rice farmers in the Tanahun district of Nepal, their impact on rice productivity, and the factors that affect farmers’ decisions to adopt adaptation practices. Adaptation practices used by rice farmers include adjustment in timing of farm operations, selection of varieties, crop rotation, improved irrigation, and fertilizer management. Rice productivity was found to be significantly higher among adopting farmers compared to non-adopting farmers. The findings further suggest that age of the household head, family size, migration of family members outside their village, number of plots under rice cultivation, land holding, and farmers’ access to information on climate change all influence farmers’ adaptation decisions. This study provides empirical evidence indicating the need for policy makers to take into consideration autonomous adaptations when designing planned adaptations against likely impacts of climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptation
• determinants
• endogenous switching
• rice productivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Uttam Khanal is a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His main research interests are issues related to agricultural development, poverty reduction, food security, agro-biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change and variability. He has published articles in journals such as Ecological Economics, Land Use Policy, Climatic Change, and Climate Policy.

Clevo Wilson is a professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He specializes in environmental, ecological, tourism, agricultural, transport, energy, and development economics with a special interest in using environmental valuation techniques, both revealed and stated. His research also focuses on supply chain value analysis, efficiency and productivity analysis, structural equation modelling, and cost–benefit analyses. He has undertaken research and published papers in diverse topics including tourism (with a special focus on nature-based tourism and economic value analysis), aquaculture, climate change, energy and water conservation, agriculture, transport, natural disasters (floods and wildfires), impact of major projects and pollution on property values, environmental sustainability and conservation of wildlife. He has been involved in 30+ major surveys and interviews with extensive data collection and analysis in several countries since 1996.

Viet-Ngu Hoang is a senior lecturer at Queensland University of Technology. His research interests include compassion and altruism, efficiency and productivity analysis, agricultural, natural resource, environmental and ecological economics, energy economics and sustainable business and development. He also acts as chief investigators in two grants funded by Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Japan's Nomura Foundation. Before moving into academia, he had spent five years working in economic, business and public relations consulting industry in Vietnam at the positions of Account Supervisors, Account Director and Business Development Director. At these roles, he had worked with many multinational corporations including Unilever, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, P&G, ADB, Intel, Coca Cola, Mercedes Benze, and so on.

Boon L. Lee is a Senior Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His research interests focus on efficiency and productivity analysis; and has publications in international journals such as Journal of Development Economics, OMEGA, Economics of Education Review, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Land Use Policy and Journal of Productivity Analysis. His research on efficiency and productivity change in Australian universities was cited in the national newspaper The Australian in 2005. In 2009, Boon was invited to participate in a public hearing of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics on inquiry into raising the level of productivity growth in the Australian economy.

Notes

1. A VDC is the administrative unit in Nepal. Each district has several VDCs, and each VDC is further divided into several wards.

2. The first stage uses a probit model to determine the relationship between adoption of adaptation and household and farm characteristics. In the second stage, separate regression equations are used to model rice productivity conditional on a specified criterion function.