Effects of Environmental Stress on Agricultural Landownership in a Sample of 16 Countries

Keywords: Land Politics, Climate Change, Weather Variability, Agriculture, Land Tenure
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 70

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of environmental stress on rates of agricultural landownership in a sample of 16 countries across Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Many smallholder farmers (working less than 2 hectares of land) rely on rainfed agriculture as a means of economic production. The disruption of weather patterns due to the adverse effects of climate variability could have a profound economic impact on these farmers, potentially leading to population displacement and exacerbating regional land issues. Recent research has found that drier than average growing season weather reduced agricultural landownership rates in 35 African countries. I build upon this finding by broadening the scope of the research to include additional countries worldwide. I measure environmental stress using the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI), which compares recent rainfall and moisture trends among a country’s administrative regions to historical averages dating back to 1901. To measure agricultural landownership rates, I rely upon georeferenced Demographic and Health Survey data. I use geographic regressions and a host of robustness checks to estimate the SPEI- landownership rate relationship.