The Relationship Between Climate Change And Cocoa Production: Evidence From West Africa

This study aims to examine the effects of climate change on cocoa production in four West African cocoa-producing countries over 30 years;from 1990 to 2019,focusing mainly on two key variables: rainfall and temperature change.For this purpose,a staggered lag autoregressive model(ARDL)was used,after stationarity and cointegration tests.To avoid regression bias and to increase the quality of the model,some empirically important variables were included in the model.These are fertilizer,taxes,government subsidies,and rural population.The data used in this study comes mainly from the FAO,climate change knowledge portal,and the World Bank.The estimates show that in the long run,temperature change and fertilizers have a significant impact on cocoa production,at the 5% significance level.Temperature change has a time-delayed effect on cocoa production.In the short term,a 1% increase in temperature change leads to a decrease in cocoa production by 6.72% the following year and 9.03% in the second year(if we tolerate a confidence level of less than 90%).While a 1% increase in temperature change leads to a long-term increase in cocoa production by 16.90%.Also,1% increase in rainfall leads to a59.37% increase in production in the same year.The error correction coefficient(ECC)and the short-term coefficient of temperature change are significant at the 5% level,implying that there is a strong causal relationship between cocoa production and temperature change.Thus,temperature change has a negative impact on cocoa production in the short term and a positive impact in the long term.Moreover,rainfall has a positive effect on cocoa production in the short term.The long-term effect of rainfall is not significant.