Effects of Climate Change on Productivity of Maize Crop in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

This study aims to assess the impact of climate change on productivity of maize in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan over a period of thirty years from 1986 to 2015. According to the ecological landscape, KP is divided into three climatic regions; the northern climatic region, the central climatic region, and the southern climatic region. The study uses Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model for maize crop in KP. This study reveals that the impacts of climatic variables are increasing from the southern climatic region to the northern climatic region. The study also reveals that any negative shock to the crops productivity can be overcome by increasing the area under maize cultivation. It is concluded that the variations in climatic variables have significant effects on maize productivity in the short-run as well as in the long-run in all the climatic regions of KP.