Variação climática e economia: impactos de longo prazo e efeitos sobre a atividade econômica municipal no Brasil

Abstract

The topic of climate change has gained increasing prominence in contemporary international agendas and debates. The rise in temperature beyond what is considered humanly comfortable, the increase in torrential rainfall causing flooding in urban areas, and the rise in sea levels threatening populations in islands and coastal regions are just a few of the factors that underscore the urgency of a socioeconomic analysis of this issue. In this context, this thesis is structured into three chapters that seek to shed light on different aspects of the topic, from the origins of climate science to its economic impacts. The first chapter begins with an overview of the evolution of scientific knowledge related to climate change. Furthermore, this initial section presents, based on an extensive literature review and economic analysis, the potential impacts of climate shocks on the factors of production, concluding with discussions on the asymmetric vulnerabilities among municipalities, particularly regarding disparities between wealthier and poorer regions, and the likely causes of this phenomenon. The second chapter focuses on investigating the potential long-term effects of climate change on the economies of Brazilian municipalities. For this purpose, an ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) methodology was applied, which is appropriate for long-term analysis. The model uses temperature and precipitation data extracted from Saldanha, Akbarina et al. (2024), along with per capita GDP and Agricultural Value Added for 5,178 Brazilian municipalities sourced from IBGE. The results reveal a heterogeneity in the effects of rainfall deviations from historical patterns. On the other hand, positive temperature deviations show negative impacts on the growth of per capita GDP and Agricultural Value Added. These findings suggest concerning implications for the Brazilian economy, especially in light of the ongoing trend of global warming. Even in regions such as the Northeast and the Semi-arid, which are characterized by heat and high solar radiation, an increase of just 0.01ºC above the average leads to a decline in per capita GDP of approximately 0.06 percentage points. After analyzing the temporal dimension of climate change impacts, the third chapter addresses another important question: drier municipalities may suffer more economically from climate variations compared to wetter ones.? To investigate this, a threshold methodology was employed, with endogenous estimation of the thresholds, using GDP data for Brazilian municipalities from 1999 to 2019 and theStandardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) as the independent variable. The results indicate that, regardless of the spatial aggregation considered (national or regional), thegroup of driest municipalities exhibits worse economic conditions compared to municipalities with higher Gross Domestic Product. Therefore, it is observed that, given these results, climate-related issues not only have long-term impacts but also affect Brazilian municipalitiesdifferently, depending on their economic status. Thus, the analyses conducted in this study leadto the conclusion that climate change represents significant challenges for Brazil, with the potential to affect both the economic and social spheres.