Household-level Livelihood Resilience Assessment Of Farmers And Herdsmen In The Pumqu River Basin,Tibetan Plateau

Climate change and extreme weather events have had a profound impact on the natural ecological environment and the development of human society.Facing the uncertainty brought by future climate change,resilience thinking provides a new way to study on enhancing and promoting the livelihood sustainable development of farmers and herdsmen.The research on resilience originates from the ecological field and has been widely used in many fields such as disaster management,climate change,social ecology and sustainable development.Livelihood resilience research focuses on the impact of climate change on livelihood resilience,assessment of livelihood resilience,and how climate change perception and adaptation strategies can improve livelihood resilience.The research on livelihood resilience in China is in its initial stage,mainly concentrated in the arid and semi-arid areas in the north of the country,and less research in other areas such as disaster-prone areas,ecologically vulnerable areas,and most of them are based on qualitative analysis and there are few researches on quantitative assessment of livelihood resilience based on field survey data.Therefore,it is particularly important to carry out quantitative assessment of livelihood resilience in typical vulnerable areas,which is conducive to identifying the factors that limit the livelihood recovery and development of vulnerable farmers and herdsmen,and provides a scientific basis for policy makers to formulate targeted policies and achieve sustainable livelihood of farmers and herdsmen.The Tibetan Plateau is a typical ecologically vulnerable and climate-sensitive area.Climate change and extreme weather events pose great threats to the livelihoods and sustainable development of local farmers and herdsmen.The permafrost degradation and vegetation deterioration caused by climate warming,as well as the occurrence of drought,snow,flood,wind,hail and other extremeweather events,directly or indirectly affect the production,life and even life safety of local farmers and herdsmen.In view of this,this paper combines the theory of resilience with the livelihood sustainable development theory,and based on the framework of livelihood resilience and sustainable livelihood,constructs the theoretical framework about the resilience of farmers and herdsmen's livelihoods to climate change from the three dimensions of buffer capacity,self-organization capacity and learning capacity.Based on the field interview data of 701 farmers and herdsmen in Dinggye,Tingri and Nyalam Counties of the Pumqu River Basin on the Tibetan Plateau,the households are classified according to livelihoods and administrative regions.Based on the different classification types of farmers and herdsmen,quantitative assessment of the livelihood resilience of various types of farmers and herdsmen and differential analysis of buffering capacity,self-organization capacity and learning capacity.And then the obstacle degree model is used to identify the main obstacles to the livelihood resilience of farmers and herdsmen,and explore the influencing factors of the livelihood resilience of different types of households.The results are as follows:(1)The main sources of livelihood of farmers and herdsmen in the study areas include planting crops,raising livestock,working nearby or outside the home,running their own businesses,industries and institutions.73.6% of households make their living from three of these sources,such as growing crops,raising livestock and working as migrant workers.As basic livelihoods,agriculture and animal husbandry meet the daily needs of farmers and herdsmen.(2)The farmers and herdsmen are divided into three types of “Low-diversified”(Type I),“Medium-diversified”(Type II)and “High-diversified”(Type III)based on the livelihood diversification index.According to the level of livelihood resilience index,the order from high to low is Type III > Type II > Type I.From the perspective of attribute dimension,the order of buffering capacity from high to low is the Type III > Type II > Type I.In terms of self-organization capacity,the order from high to low is Type III > Type I > Type II.The order of learning capacity from high to low is Type III > Type II > Type I.The low resilience of Type I and Type II households may be due to their lack of labor capacity,low level of education,lack of agricultural equipment and transportation,lack of leadership,low involvement in community organizations,and less training in professional skills.But in general,the level of livelihood resilience of the three types of households is not high,indicating that their capacity to adapt to climate change needs to be improved.In addition,the main obstacle factors affecting the livelihood resilience of Type I and Type II farmers and herdsmen are the same,mainly including leadership,the proportion of skills training,social network,cash income,the proportion of non-agricultural labor force,and the number of livestock.And the main factors affecting the Type III households include social network,cash income,theproportion of skills training,the proportion of non-agricultural labor force,the number of livestock,and the per capita grassland area.(3)The overall levels of livelihood resilience in different towns are generally low,ranging from 0.190~0.302.Among the nine towns,menbu town has the highest livelihood resilience,followed by guojia,quebu,zhaxizong,suozuo,xieger,jiangga,jiacuo,and nailong township has the lowest livelihood resilience index.In terms of buffer capacity,nine towns differ greatly about the indicators of labor capacity,per capita grassland area,cash income,number of livestock and number of agricultural equipment.In terms of self-organization capacity,there is no significant difference between the nine towns in the secondary index,but nailong town has the lowest index of leadership,community organization and social network.In terms of learning capacity,the proportion of non-agricultural labor force,the proportion of skill training and the index value of the highest educational level are all at a low level,indicating that the learning capacity of the farmers and herdsmen in the study area as a whole needs to be improved.Finally,the Obstacle Model is used to explore the limited factors affecting the livelihood resilience of the sample towns.The study found that leadership,social network,cash income,proportion of skill training,number of livestock,proportion of non-agricultural labor force and community organization are the common main obstacles to the livelihood resilience of the farmers and herdsmen in the sample towns.The paper concluded with policy recommendations on popularizing knowledge of climate change and disasters,improving the early warning and control mechanism,optimizing the structure of agriculture and promoting capital accumulation to form farmers and herdsmen's buffer barriers,improving the social network environment to strengthen the farmers and herdsmen's self-organization capacity,increasing support for education to diversify the farmers and herdsmen's livelihood.