Livelihood Vulnerability And Adaptation Of Langqv Mosuo People To Climate Change

Climate change is a serious challenge faced by all mankind.The ethnic minorities who are in the edge zone of political,economic and cultural areas,and live in the plateau and mountainous areas and other fragile ecological environment areas,and highly depend on natural resources for their way of livelihood are often the most vulnerable to climate change.The research object of this dissertation is the Langqv Mosuo people who live in the central and southern area of Ninglang Yi Autonomous County in Lijiang City,Yunnan Province.In this study,it could be found from the analysis of the meteorological data observed by the meteorological station of Ninglang Yi Autonomous County since 1959 that the trend of temperature rising and precipitation decreasing in Ninglang County in recent 61 years was consistent with the perception of Mosuo villagers in the field site Labaheshang village on the trend of climate change in recent years.Meteorological scientific data could be combined with local people's cognition and complemented with each other to describe the climate change and extreme climate disasters in a specific region in an all-round and three-dimensional way.Moreover,during the long-term observation and adaptation to the ecological environment,Mosuo villagers in the Labaheshang village have accumulated rich regional knowledge of weather prediction,and made their own explanations for the causes of climate change based on their own Daba religion and Tibetan Buddhist beliefs.By the reason that the traditional ways of livelihood dominated by planting and breeding highly depend on natural resources and environment,the production and life of Mosuo villagers in the Labaheshang village are directly impacted by climate change.In this study,the framework of sustainable livelihood analysis was introduced into vulnerability analysis,and the five livelihood capital indexes were used for designing the questionnaire to assess livelihood capital vulnerability of the Mosuo farmers in Labaheshang village in the face of climate change.According to the assessment results,the farmers were divided into natural capital deficient farmers,human capital deficientfarmers,financial capital deficient farmers,multi-capital deficient farmers and the farmers reasonable capital allocation,and a typical farmer was selected from each kind of the farmers for in-depth interviews.The research showed that,when facing the climate change,the farmers with reasonable capital allocation could prevent climate change risks by a variety of livelihood capitals,and the vulnerability thereof was the lowest,while the multi-capital deficient farmers could not resist the climate change risks due to the lack of several kinds of necessary livelihood capital at the same time,so they were the most vulnerable farmers.The natural capital deficient farmers,human capital deficient farmers and financial capital deficient farmers also had higher livelihood vulnerability for the lack of specific livelihood capital.In order to alleviate or avoid the harm of climate change and reduce the vulnerability of their livelihood in the face of climate change,Mosuo villagers in the Labaheshang village have adopted various adaptation strategies for climate change,such as mobility strategy,exchange strategy,storage strategy,income structure diversification strategy and construction of common pooling mechanism.The experience and knowledge accumulated in the past practice of adaptation to climate change can provide reference for the Langqv Mosuo people to adapt to climate change in the future.