Climate Change and Agricultural Trade in Iran: A Dynamic Input-Output Analysis

In recent decades, the significance of the issue of climate change has escalated due to its intensified impacts, potentially diminishing or halting economic growth, particularly in developing countries and vulnerable sectors such as agriculture. Climate change may be considered the most important and complex human challenge. Among the economic effects, trade variables have been examined inadequately. Accordingly, the focus of this study is to investigate the impact of climate change on the export and import of agricultural products in Iran over a forty-year horizon, which was carried out using a dynamic input-output model. This study uses scenarios of temperature anomaly to examine the impact of climate change on different sectors of Iran’s economy. The findings indicate that climate change has a significant impact on the growth of both exports and imports of agricultural products. Under normal conditions without climate change, the average annual growth rate of agricultural product imports is 2.7 percent. However, this rate decreases to 1-1.8 percent when different climate change scenarios are taken into account. Regarding the exports, the corresponding value is 2.75 percent, expected to be reduced to 0.55-1.8 percent.  In addition, it was found that agricultural trade will be dominated by cereals import. Also, the total trade of the Iranian economy will change in favor of non-agricultural commodities