Projections of economic impacts of climate change in agriculture in Europe

The objective of this study is to provide monetary estimates of the impacts of climate change inEuropean agricultural sector. The future scenarios incorporate socio-economic projectionsderived from several socio-economic scenarios and experiments conducted using global climatemodels and regional climate models. The quantitative results are based simulations using theGTAP general equilibrium models system that includes all relevant economic activities. Theestimated changes in the exports and imports of agricultural goods, value of GDP and value ofworld supply under the climate and socio-economic scenarios show significant regionaldifferences between northern and southern European countries. The simulations were based oncrop productivity changes that considered no restrictions in water availability for irrigation orrestrictions in the application of nitrogen fertilizer. Therefore the results should be consideredoptimistic from the production point and pessimistic from the environmental point of view.Water restrictions and socio-economic variables that modify the probabilities of changeoccurring may also be considered in a later stage of the study. The monetary estimates show thatin all cases uncertainty derived from socio-economic scenarios has a larger effect than thederive from climate scenarios.