Grant type: AXA Post-Doctoral Fellowship

Funder: AXA Research Fund

Selected Research Fellow: Emilia Lamonaca

Institution: University of Foggia, Italy

Year of selection: 2020

Duration: 2021-2023

Title: Climate Change and Inequalities in the Economic Growth Between Regions: The Role of Trade Patterns Adjustments and Trade Regulations in Explaining the Developed-Developing Divide

Description

Climate change is likely to have an increasing influence on the economic growth of many regions of the world. Agriculture in low latitude regions–often developing countries–, already suffering from poverty and food insecurity, could be negatively affected. High latitude regions–often developed countries–, characterised by temperate climates, could observe positive effects on agriculture with warmer weather. Overall, climate change is likely to worsen the developed-developing divide. Uneven impacts of climate change across regions and consequent changes in food availability and access are likely to affect international trade patterns and trade routes. By allowing the reallocation of food from surplus to deficit regions, agricultural trade has the potential to lowering inequalities between regions with different levels of economic growth, helping countries adapt to climate change.

In her AXA Fellowship, Dr. Emilia Lamonaca seeks to evaluate how trade and regulations allow regions with different levels of economic growth to adapt to climate change. Specifically, she wants to understand how climate change, by altering comparative advantage of regions, affects their export capacity, how regions with different levels of economic growth adapt to climate change by reshaping trade patterns, how trade and regulations contribute to the allocation of co-benefits and side-effects of climate change mitigation policies across regions with different economic levels. By providing an in-depth analysis of the relationships between international trade and climate change, this project will contribute to the efforts of promoting sustainable development and combating climate change. The project will also provide evidence on international trade as an adaptation strategy to climate change in agriculture at global, regional and national levels.