Climate shocks and food insecurity in rural Afghanistan: evidence from the data in emergencies household survey

Abstract

Climate shocks, especially droughts, floods, and intense winds threaten the food security in fragile, agrarian economies like Afghanistan. Afghan rural households mostly depend on subsistence farming and small-scale commercial farming for food production. This research project investigates how climate shocks, particularly droughts, affect food insecurity for Afghan rural households, focusing on why some households cope better than others. Existing studies show climate shocks harm crops and increase food insecurity in various regions globally, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. However, there's still a need to understand how individual rural Afghan households experience and cope with climate-related food insecurity. The analysis will use household datasets from the FAO’s Data in Emergencies Monitoring (DIEM) survey for Afghanistan. Ordered probit regressions is used as a primary model to examine the impact of climate shocks on food security and coping strategy as a secondary model. The outcomes of these two models use two standard indicators: Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) and Livelihood-based Coping Strategies Index. The primary model result shows that when controlling for livelihood type, household characteristics, structural conditions, and region, drought mainly increases the probability of moderate food insecurity by approximately 3–4 percentage points, while floods and other wet shocks increase the likelihood of severe food insecurity by more than 13 percentage points. Examining key potential pathways that link drought and household food insecurity, shows that income change explains most of the impact. Further, drought seems to have a more heterogeneous impact especially on crop rainfed households, while wet shocks are more homogenous, even after controlling for livelihood sources. Female-headed households have the highest risk of severe food insecurity regardless of shock exposure, due to structural barriers and baseline vulnerability. The findings provide policy recommendations to strengthen the resilience of rural communities against climate shocks. This can be achieved by improving rural households’ ability to adapt and cope with climate-related food insecurity.