Household and Community Assets Affect Farmers’ Adaptive Capacity against Drought in China

Apr 28, 2014     Email"> PrintText Size

In recent years, extreme weather events have received increasing concerns due to their significant impacts on economy, society, and environment. In particular, the severe drought, because of its long-lasting and wide area coverage, can have devastating effects on agricultural and other natural resource-dependent households in the developing world. In face of increasingly serious challenge of drought, the question of how to adapt to it through appropriate measures has attracted great attention from policy makers and researchers.

However, the current level of knowledge is not sufficient to support the implementation of national plan on adaptation to climate change at local and farm levels. In the literatures, while the links between human capital or local community services and technology adoption have been well documented, little evidences are available on the role of human capital on farmer’s adaption to drought. The overall goals of this study are to have better understanding on adaptation measures taken by farmers and the roles of both household and community assets on farmers’ adaptation when they face drought.

Based on a unique data set collected from a household survey in three provinces in China, Dr. WANG, Prof. HUANG Jikun and Prof. WANG jinxia from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that though not common on annual basis, some farmers did use physical adaptation measures to fight drought. These physical measures include investments and maintenances of irrigation facilities such as canal, tube well, cistern, pond, and pump equipment.

Regression analysis reveals that both household and community assets significantly affect farmers’ adaptation behaviors. Improving households’ social capital and wealth, communities’ network and access to government’s anti-drought service can facilitate farmers’ adaptation to drought. Results indicate that community’s irrigation infrastructure and physical adaptation taken by farmers can substitute each other. Further analysis shows that the households taken adaptation measures have higher crop yields than those without taken these measures.

This research indicates that improving farmers’ adaptation capacity is important to cope with the rising extreme weather events. Especially, enhancing the adaptive capabilities of the poor in vulnerable regions in responding to climate risks should be one of prioritized areas for policy interventions.

The study has been published in Journal of Integrative Agriculture (Yangjie Wang, Jikun Huang*, Jinxia Wang，Household and Community Assets and Farmers’ Adaptation to Extreme Weather Event: the Case of Drought in China, Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2014).