Search

Highlights • This paper estimates the ability of farmers in India to adapt to high temperatures. • The analysis uses short-term weather fluctuations and spatial variation in long-run climate. • Results suggest that adaptation is modestly effective for moderate levels of heat. • Results suggest that adaptation to extreme heat is much more difficult. Abstract Projections suggest that the damages from climate change will be substantial for developing countries. Understanding the ability of households in these countries to adapt to climate change is critical in order to determine the magnitude of the potential damages. In this paper, I investigate the ability of farmers in India to adapt to higher temperatures. I use a methodology that exploits short-term weather fluctuations as well as spatial variation in long-run climate. Specifically, I estimate how damaging high temperatures are for districts that experience high temperatures more or less frequently. I find that the losses from high temperatures are lower in heat-prone districts, a result that is consistent with adaptation. However, while adaptation appears to be modestly effective for moderate levels of heat, my results suggest that adaptation to extreme heat is much more difficult. Extremely high temperatures do grave damage to crops, even in places that experience these temperature extremes regularly. The persistence of negative impacts of high temperatures, even in areas that experience high temperatures frequently, underscores the need for development policies that emphasize risk mitigation and explicitly account for climate-change-related risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The ability of farmers to adapt to changing environments is an important determinant of welfare. • Neighbors may enhance adaptive capacity through spatial spillover adaptation effects. • Spatial interactions amplify the marginal effects of adaptive capacity elements by 50 percent. • Targeting the adaptation of few but central households is enough to generate spatial spillovers. The ability of farmers to adapt to changing rural environments in developing countries is an important determinant of welfare. But the adaptive capacity of farmers may be constrained because economic resources, information, and institutions are often weak or missing. Farmers living close to one another face similar environmental and economic conditions, but may have different levels of adaptive capacity. These spatially connected farmers (or neighbors) can potentially ease economic constraints and facilitate adaptation by acting as conduits of information and resources. This paper estimates spatial effects on adaptation: how neighbors' adaptations influence farmers' adaptation decisions. Our data contains information from more than two thousand households located across 12 countries in Africa and Asia. We find that neighbors significantly influence adaptation decisions, and that spatial interactions amplify the marginal effects of adaptive capacity elements by 50 percent. We also propose a targeting approach that decomposes the total spatial effect into effects coming from different subsets of households that are selected according to their spatial centrality. We find that targeting the two households with highest eigenvector centrality in each village is enough to generate a statistically significant spatial multiplier effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]