Climate adaptation, local institutions, and rural livelihoods: A comparative study of herder communities in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China

•Livelihood adaptation strategies are different in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia.•Local institutions played key roles in shaping livelihood adaptation strategies.•Decreased grazing mobility has increased livelihood vulnerability of herders. Climate variability has been evident on the Mongolian plateau...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global environmental change 2013-12, Vol.23 (6), p.1673-1683
Main Authors: Wang, Jun, Brown, Daniel G., Agrawal, Arun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adaptation to change
Biodegradation
capital
Categories
China
Climate
Climate adaptation
Climate change
Environmental problems
forage
Forages
grasslands
grazing
Herder communities
Households
Human ecology and demography
livelihood
Livestock
local government
Local institutions
Markets
Mongolia
Mongolian grasslands
pastures
plateaus
purchasing
Rural livelihoods
Sociology
Sociology of organizations and enterprises. Bureaucracy and administration
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
Statistical models
Strategy
surveys
Sustainable development
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Summary:•Livelihood adaptation strategies are different in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia.•Local institutions played key roles in shaping livelihood adaptation strategies.•Decreased grazing mobility has increased livelihood vulnerability of herders. Climate variability has been evident on the Mongolian plateau in recent decades. Livelihood adaptation to climate variability is important for local sustainable development. This paper applies an analytical framework focused on adaptation, institutions, and livelihoods to study climate adaptation in the Mongolian grasslands. A household survey was designed and implemented in each of three broad vegetation types in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. The analytical results show that livelihood adaptation strategies of herders vary greatly across the border between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China. Local institutions played important roles in shaping and facilitating livelihood adaptation strategies of herders. Mobility and communal pooling were the two key categories of adaptation strategies in Mongolia, and they were shaped and facilitated by local communal institutions. Storage, livelihood diversification, and market exchange were the three key categories of adaptation strategies in Inner Mongolia, and they were mainly shaped and facilitated by local government and market institutions. Local institutions enhanced but also at times undermined adaptive capacity of herder communities in the two countries, but in different ways. Sedentary grazing has increased livelihood vulnerability of herders to climate variability and change. With grazing sedentarization, the purchase and storage of forage has become an important strategy of herders to adapt to the highly variable climate. The multilevel statistical models of forage purchasing behaviors show that the strategies of livestock management, household financial capital, environmental (i.e., precipitation and vegetation growth) variability, and the status of pasture degradation were the major determinants of this adaptation strategy.
ISSN:0959-3780
1872-9495
DOI:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.08.014