Food Security and Agricultural Policy Responses to Climate Change in Pakistan

Abstract

Pakistan is one of the countries in the world which is more vulnerable to climate change. The country’s agrarian economy is more vulnerable to climate change because of the rise in temperature, the erratic nature of the monsoon rains, the melting of the glaciers, and the occurrence of more extreme weather events. Agriculture contributes about 22% to the country’s GDP, and about 38% of the country’s workforce is employed in the agriculture sector. However, the sector is vulnerable to a number of compounding threats to productivity and sustainability which have a direct impact on the country’s food security. There is a scarcity of integrated empirical evidence on the efficacy of the responses to climate change in the country’s agriculture sector. This research was undertaken to examine the role of the country’s agriculture sector policies in addressing the issue of climate change, food security, and to gather views from the country’s farmers on the impact of climate change on food production and the efficacy of the existing policy measures to mitigate the impact of climate change on the country’s food security. The research was undertaken through a mixed research methodology where quantitative data was collected from 200 farmers and experts through a quantitative method of data collection, while the quantitative data was analyzed through the application of the Pearson correlation coefficient and regression analysis in SPSS. The key findings included that perceived climate change severity (-0.461, p < 0.001), perceived policy effectiveness (0.384, p < 0.001), and adaptive capacity index (0.312, p < 0.01) were significant predictors of food security outcomes. The model explained 67.2% of the variance. The thematic analysis revealed five key themes, which included weak policy implementation, water scarcity as a key threat, financial exclusion of smallholders, fragmented institutions, and climate-smart agriculture potential. Overall, it was revealed that Pakistan’s agricultural policies are currently addressing climate-food security linkages to a limited extent. There are significant gaps to be addressed regarding policy implementation. There is a need to enhance policy coordination, financial support to smallholders to adapt to climate change, and accelerated development of climate smart agriculture infrastructure to ensure food security in Pakistan despite climate change.