An assessment of the economic impact of climate change on the agriculture sector in Saint Lucia

This study looks at the economic impacts of rainfall and temperature on the key agricultural sub-sectors in Saint Lucia: bananas, other crops (a wide mix of 24 tree, root and vegetable crops) and fisheries. A production function approach is used, largely due to data scarcity at the farm level. A Baseline case was constructed which assumed that the mean rainfall and temperature for the base period of 1980 - 2000 would exist through to 2050 under a "no climate change" case. This was compared to the IPCC A2 and B2 scenarios, using data derived from downscaled, regional PRECIS climate model. There were mixed results overall, with temperature generally having the larger unit effect on output.