Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change on Rice Production: A Qualitative Perspective

Abstract

Several quantitative studies have concluded that climate change would negatively affect the Asian rice supply. Recently, as temperatures in Asia have approached the temperature threshold for rice growth, the Asian rice supply has become vulnerable to climate change in the near future. To complement quantitative studies' projections of the negative impacts of climate change on rice supply, this paper offers a qualitative analysis using system archetypes to understand the impacts of climate change on rice production. Two structures of the system archetypes are identified including Limits to Growth and Success to Successful. Both archetypes explain that rice production is hampered by high minimum temperature, as photosynthesis output is decreased by an increasing respiration. This paper shows that using this simple tool, system archetypes, we can describe the impacts of climate change on rice production. The outputs of this study, such as the causal loop diagram and system archetypes, can be the basis for the development of a simulation model used for understanding the impacts of climate change on major crops.