Journal of Cleaner Production 308 (2021) 127219 Available online 4 May 2021 0959-6526/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The impact of climate change on the economic perspectives of crop farming in Pakistan: Using the ricardian model Uzair Ali a , Jing Wang a, * , Arif Ullah b , Asif Ishtiaque c , Tehseen Javed d , Zhanar Nurgazina a a College of Economics and Management, Northwest Agricultural & Forestry University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, PR China b Department of Economics and Business Administration, University of Education, Lahore, (Faisalabad Campus), Faisalabad, 38000, Pakistan c School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA d College of Water Resources and Architecture Engineering, Northwest Agricultural & Forestry University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, PR China A R T I C L E INFO Handling editor: Bin Chen Keywords: Climate change Economic perspectives Ricardian model Crop revenue Agro-ecological zones Pakistan ABSTRACT Climate change may have detrimental effects on income from crop farming in Pakistan and according to the IPCC (2014), the impacts of climate change will be more vigorous in the coming years. Despite a few studies we still have limited knowledge on how climate change can impact the crop farming economy in Pakistan. Considering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan as the study area, we attempted to fll this gap by analyzing the economic impacts of climate change on the net income from crop farming. Data from the 635 farm households and also climatic variables data were collected from fve agro-ecological zones (AEZ) of the KP. The Ricardian method was employed for analysis purposes. The results revealed that the increase of annual average temper- ature and decreases in rainfall is strongly associated with net revenue defcits. The effects of increasing pre- cipitation are observed to be useful but an increase in temperature is forecasted to be harmful to the net revenue. The effect of increased temperature in the summer season on NR ranged between US$-29 to US$35, and the effect in the winter season ranged between US$-14 to US$28 per hectare. The effect of decreased annual precipitation on NR in the summer season and winter season ranged between US$ 0 to US$-24 and US$<-20 per hectare, respectively. This effect is particularly severe in the Central Valley Plains, Southern Piedmont Plains, and Western Dry Mountains. This study further evaluates the effects of the climatic forecasts by three Atmospheric Oceanic General Circulation Models (AOGCM). Our results will facilitate the policymakers to implement suitable strategies in KP to curb the deleterious effects of climate change on overall crop production and farmer income. 1. Introduction Climate change can be observed through extreme fuctuation and variability in the pattern of rainfall, degree of temperature, level of humidity, the occurrence of drought, uneven fall of the hailstorm, and increasing level of fog on the earth’s surface (IPCC, 2014). Climate change can be described as a long-term change in the global or regional climate (Zareian et al., 2017). As the agricultural sector is heavily reliant on weather and climate, a change in climate poses a serious threat to it. By the end of this century, the global temperature may increase 1.4–3.1 ◦ C causing a decrease in the productivity of different crops (Sadiq et al., 2019). The effect of climate change on agriculture will not be similar across the world (Rosenzweig et al., 2014). Studies indicate that developed nations in temperate environments may be marginally affected due to their higher capacity for adaptation (Mendelsohn and Wang, 2017). In contrast, climate change will signifcantly impact the tropics and the sub-tropics region of the world, particularly the least developed and developing countries (Mendelsohn et al., 2006; Men- delsohn et al., 2017). Climate change impacts threaten agricultural productivity and food security in South Asia (Bandara and Cai, 2014). In this region, the crop proftability and returns decreased by 17% due to climatic changes (Hossain et al., 2019b). Climate change infuences not only crop productivity, but also impacts farm livelihoods, crop revenue, and farmers’ consumption pattern (Brown et al., 2019). Unpredictable dry spells, frequent fooding, and increasing temperature continue to harm farmers’ livelihoods across the region (De, 2017; Hirooka et al., 2019). Among the South Asian countries, Pakistan is extremely vulnerable to climate change and encounters natural disasters almost every other year (Schilling et al., 2013). In the year 2009–2010, Pakistan was * Corresponding author. E-mail address: wangjing660113@yeah.net (J. Wang). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127219 Received 18 July 2020; Received in revised form 8 March 2021; Accepted 18 April 2021