LB 40-336 - Farmers’ livelihood resilience to climate change in Inner Mongolia, China

The socioeconomic development and livelihoods in most developing countries are severely affected by climate change, especially agricultural systems, which are rural farmers' primary livelihood source. It is necessary to evaluate farmers' livelihood resilience and identify the factors influencing farmers' livelihood resilience to climate change. To achieve the above goals, firstly, based on the resilience theory, we constructed an indicator system to measure the farmers' livelihood resilience under the impact of climate change. The case of the Aohan Banner of Inner Mongolia was studied, and the comprehensive index method was used to evaluate farmers' livelihood resilience after climate change disturbance. Then, the multiple linear regression model was used to analyze the critical factors influencing the farmers' livelihood resilience in different livelihood types and towns. The data were collected by interviews with questionnaires conducted in August, September, and October of 2021, and 596 valid respondents were analyzed. We found that according to the type of livelihood, the order of farmers' livelihood resilience from high to low is: agriculture as a major job type, agriculture as a side job type, and sole agricultural type. In addition, there were differences among the towns of Aohan Banner in farmers' livelihood resilience in geographical location, which gradually declined from south to north. Socioeconomic characteristics, external environment, and perceptual factors affect farmers' livelihood resilience. Among them, the highest education level in the families, family size, the holding size of arable area, agricultural technology training, transportation infrastructure, accessibility of information, change of livelihood strategies, awareness of climate change, and climate change perception are positively associated with farmers' livelihood resilience, while the age of the household head negatively. Finally, in this study, we provided a reference basis for government decision-makers to formulate scientific and effective climate change adaptation strategies and for farmers to adopt effective livelihood strategies to cope with climate change and promote sustainable development of the ecosystem.