Climate change impacts on cereal crops production in Pakistan Evidence from cointegration analysis

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effects of CO2 emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and the labour force on the production of cereal crops in Pakistan from the period 1971-2014. Design/methodology/approach The study used the Johansen cointegration test, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and Granger causality test to estimate the long-run cointegration and direction of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. Findings The outcomes of the Johansen cointegration test confirmed the existence of a long-term cointegrating relationship between the production of cereal crops, CO2 emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and the labour force. The results of the long-run coefficients of CO2 emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and labour force have a positive impact on cereal crops production. The long-run relationships reveal that a 1 per cent increase in CO2 emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and labour force will increase cereal crops production by 0.20, 0.11, 0.56 and 0.74 per cent, respectively. Moreover, the findings show that there is a bidirectional causality running from CO2 emissions and cultivated area to cereal crops production. Moreover, there is a unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to cereal crops production. Originality/value The present study also fills the literature gap for applying the ARDL procedure to examine this relevant issue for Pakistan.