Impacts of climate change on food utilization in Nepal

Understanding how long‐term climate patterns affect food security outcomes is crucial for crafting food policy in developing countries. In the case of Nepal, existing studies have focused overwhelmingly on food production and supply, but relatively little attention has been paid to understanding how...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReview of development economics Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 630 - 659
Main Authors Guo, Wenmei, Rayamajhee, Veeshan, Bohara, Alok K.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2023
Subjects
Caloric intake
Climate change
Developing countries
Farmers
Financial institutions
food diversity
Food production
Food security
food utilization
LDCs
Mitigation
Nepal
nutrition
Rainfall
Social capital
Trends
Nepal
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Summary:Understanding how long‐term climate patterns affect food security outcomes is crucial for crafting food policy in developing countries. In the case of Nepal, existing studies have focused overwhelmingly on food production and supply, but relatively little attention has been paid to understanding how extreme climate trends affect food utilization. This study fills that gap in the literature by examining the effects of temperature and rainfall trends from 1976 to 2005 on individual daily caloric intake and food diversity in Nepal. We use the copula method to jointly estimate the two potentially correlated food utilization outcomes. We find that climate risk negatively affects both outcomes. One percent increase (0.01 points) in climate risk index (index ranges from 0 to 1) leads to a decrease in weighted caloric intake by 8.1 calories (equivalent to 1.1% of average weighted caloric intake of 726 calories) and food diversity by 0.114 points (a reduction of 0.43% reduction of the mean score). We also find that factors such as ecological belts and social capital are strongly correlated with food security. Based on our findings, we recommend policies that attract private and public investments towards improving farmers' access to financial institutions, transportation networks, and risk‐mitigation products and programs.
ISSN:1363-6669
1467-9361
DOI:10.1111/rode.12953