Climate change, agriculture and economic effects on different regions of Brazil

Abstract

In this paper we assess the potential economic effects of climate change on Brazilian agriculture scenarios in different regions in a general equilibrium framework, using a detailed regional economic database for the year 2005. Two different climate change impact scenarios are simulated. This paper extends the Brazilian literature in three different ways: by considering detailed shocks by product and region; by highlighting the connections between the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and the labor market, with an inter-regional focus; and by specifying the links between climate change forecasts for agriculture and household expenditures. Results show that climate change impacts on Brazilian agriculture would have a relatively small economic effect on the Brazilian economy in aggregate terms, but with severe consequences at the regional level, making a strong case for losses that would be concentrated in the poorest regions and for the poorest workers and households in those regions.

Natural disasters and economic growth in Northeast Brazil: evidence from municipal economies of the Ceará State

“…The economic growth of municipalities is especially responsive to the occurrence of large natural disasters that lead to an emergency condition or public calamity. This is worrisome evidence, since global warming has tended to intensify environmental hazards in Northeast Brazil throughout the 21st century (Seneviratne et al , 2012) with particular consequences for agricultural productivity in Ceará state (Ferreira Filho and de Moraes, 2014; Assunção and Chein, 2016).…”

Potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and the economy in different regions of Brazil

“…Domingues et al (2010) used a dynamic recursive general equilibrium model to analyze the impacts of climate change for Brazil by distinguishing micro-regions and eight agricultural activities. Ferreira Filho & Moraes (2015) analyzed this issue using a static interregional general equilibrium model, calibrated for the year 2005, considering shocks detailed by agricultural product (eight products) and by region (27 regions). The common element in these studies -in addition to the general equilibrium approach -is that they start from the same future estimates of losses of apt areas made by researchers from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and partners -more fully communicated in Deconto (2008) -derived from the climatic scenarios of the 4th IPCC Assessment Report (AR4) (Intergovernmental Panel on Change Climate, 2007).…”

“…Its central theoretical structure comes from the TERM model (The Enormous Regional Model) -a static CGE model developed for the Australian economy (Horridge et al, 2005;Horridge, 2012) -and its dynamic extension (Wittwer & Verikios, 2012). A static version of TERM-BR has been widely used in studies for Brazil (Santos & Ferreira Filho, 2007;Fachinello & Ferreira Filho, 2010;Pavão & Ferreira Filho, 2011;Ferreira Filho & Moraes, 2015;Diniz & Ferreira Filho, 2015;Santos & Ferreira Filho, 2017;Silva & Ferreira Filho, 2018). The dynamic version of the model for the Brazilian economy, although more recent, has also been used in several studies (Ferreira Filho & Horridge, 2014;Silva et al, 2017).…”

The impacts of the Brazilian NDC and their contribution to the Paris agreement on climate change

“…(2003), Ferreira Filho and Rocha (2008) and Feijó and Porto (2009) investigated the impacts of carbon taxes on the Brazilian economy. Ferreira Filho and Moraes (2015) projected climate change impacts on Brazilian agriculture. EMCB (2010) analyzed the costs of reducing deforestation in the Amazon region, heavily deploying biofuels into the energy mix, and adopting carbon taxes, but each of these mitigation options were considered individually in alternative models.…”