Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in South-East Asia—Drought Conditions and Crop Damage Assessment

Abstract

Climate change has had adverse impacts on agriculture, but only a handful of studies exist on this phenomenon in South-East Asia. To help provide better-informed policy interventions, in this study, the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-computing platform was used to assess the temporal and spatial changes of drought conditions and related impacts on crops in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region from 1980 to 2019. To assess drought intensity and to identify its impact on irrigated and rain-fed agriculture land, 47,192 grid points with 10 × 10 km (km) resolution were created. It found that the Monsoon Climate Region had more droughts with higher intensity, while the Equatorial Climate Region experienced more wet conditions with a lower intensity of drought conditions in irrigated and rain-fed agriculture lands. Still, about 19.9 million hectares (ha) of croplands in the ASEAN region faced severe drought conditions, while 3.6 million ha of croplands faced wet conditions and possible flood damage. Accordingly, the loss of production of irrigated and rain-fed croplands in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam was estimated at about 21.9 million tons during 2015–2019. To address drought impacts, four levels of policy interventions for ASEAN are suggested—low, medium, high, and business-as-usual—depending on the level of drought conditions in a particular country.

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Appendix A

Table 1.5 Drought Intensities during the Crop-Growing Season by Country (Tables 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13 and 1.14).

Table 1.5 Cambodia

Table 1.6 Thailand

Table 1.7 Myanmar

Table 1.8 Viet Nam

Table 1.9 Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Table 1.10 Indonesia

Table 1.11 Malaysia

Table 1.12 Philippines

Table 1.13 Brunei Darussalam

Table 1.14 Singapore