In this paper we review current approaches and recent advances in research on climate impacts and adaptation in South Africa. South Africa has a well-developed earth system science research program that underpins the climate change scenarios developed for the southern African region. Established research on the biophysical impacts of climate change on key sectors (water, agriculture, and biodiversity) integrates the climate change scenarios but further research is needed in a number of areas, such as the climate impacts on cities and the built environment.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges facing the world in general and Africa in particular. This article examines economic costs of climate change and climate finance with a focus on Africa.

Financial insurance for extreme events can play an important role in hedging against the implications of climate change. This paper combines a comprehensive estimation strategy and a unique panel dataset to study the role of financial insurance in farmers' welfare under uncertainty.

In this paper, after a review of the evolution of the literature on climate change economics in agriculture, I present some evidence of the impact of different moments of the distribution of rainfall on farmers risk aversion.

It is found that while more rainfall is negatively associated with the probability of observing risk aversion, rainfall variability is positively correlated. This result highlights an important behavioural dimension of climatic factors.

This study investigates the impact of climate change adaptation on farm households’ downside risk exposure in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The analysis relies on a moment-based specification of the stochastic production function. We use an empirical strategy that accounts for the heterogeneity in the decision on whether to adapt or not, and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm.

The authors analyze the impact of different adaptation strategies on crop net revenues in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia and they estimate a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of climate change adaptation and crop net revenues and implement a counterfactual analysis.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of climate change on agriculture in a typical developing country. The economic implications of climate change are estimated by using both a farm productivity and a Ricardian framework.