Impact Of Climate Change On Vulnerability Of Farmers' Livelihood In An Ecologically Vulnerable Alpine Region

Climate change is one of the most serious challenges to humanity in the 21 st century, which exacerbated the vulnerability of many countries and regions,especially for the agricultural population who based on the natural resources f or their livelihoods. Clear the impacts of climate change on farmers' livelihood vulnerability and the adaptation demands of farmers are of great significance for making effectively adaptive strategy and strengthening the farmers' adaptabi lity and mitigating livelihood vulnerability to climate change. This paper, take Gannan Plateau, a representative ecologically vulnerable alpine region, as the st udy area, establishes a index system for evaluating farmers' livelihood vulnerab ility to climate change. And based on 500 questionnaires of farmers, analyzes t he impacts of climate change on farmers' livelihood vulnerability and the adapt ation demands of the different regions and different livelihood strategies of far mers in Gannan plateau, and the key factors of affecting the adaptation deman ds of the farmers by using the two logistic regression model.in Gannan Plateau,and the key factors that affect farmers' livelihood vulnerability by using the multivariable linear regression model. The results show that:(1) The impacts of climate change are different on different types of hous eholds in Gannan plateau, of which, the vulnerability of young householders i s the strongest, the vulnerability of the householders in the middle age is the l east. And the vulnerability of farmers' livelihood to climate change tends to re duce from the low income households to the high income households, from th e households of householder with low education level to the households of ho useholder with high education level, from the households with less than 10% o f their income from non-farm(type?) to the households with morn than 90% of their income from non-farm(type ?),and from the households with low de pendency ratio to the households with high dependency ratio.(2) The impact of climate change is different on the livelihood of farmers in different regions, of which, the vulnerability of households living in pure p astoral area is the strongest, the vulnerability of households living in the farmi ng areas is the least.(3) The age and the education level of householders, the income per capit al of households and the level of non-agriculturalization and livelihood diversification are positively correlated with the vulnerability of farmers' livelihood to climate change. but the dependency ratio is negatively correlated with it.(4) There are different demands in adaptation to climate change in differe nt regions, of which, both of the demands of the farmers of pastoral area and farming district for infrastructure are the strongest, and the demands of agricu ltural- pastoral area for information is the most intense.(5) Different livelihood strategies of farmers to climate change have differ ent demands, of which, the demands of type?households(with less than 10% o f their income from non-farm) for credit insurance is the most intense, the de mands of type ? households(with 10% to 50% of their income from non-far m) and type ?(with more than 50% of their income from non-farm) househol ds for infrastructure are the most strong.(6) In addition, the natural capital and the physical capital are the key fac tors that affect farmers' demands for the production technology, the natural cap ital and the human capital are the key factors that influence farmers' demands for information, the human capital and the financial capital are the key factors that impact farmers' demands for infrastructure, and the natural capital, human capital, financial capital, material capital and the social capital are the key fac tors that affecting farmers' demands for credit insurance. Finally, the policy sug gestions to improve the farmers' adaptation to climate change are proposed.