Elsevier

Journal of Rural Studies

Volume 83, April 2021, Pages 127-137
Journal of Rural Studies

Will social capital affect farmers’ choices of climate change adaptation strategies? Evidences from rural households in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.02.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Social capital provides a new perspective for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

  • Most farmers in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau have adopted necessary climate change adaptation strategies.

  • Social networks, trust and norms significantly affect farmers' choice of climate change adaptation strategies.

  • Farmers with various social networks, trust and norms have differences in choosing climate change adaptation strategies.

  • Exerting the positive role of social capital can promote the implementation of climate change adaptation policies.

Abstract

Adopting necessary climate change adaptation strategies is an important measure to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In recent years, social capital has provided a new perspective for analyzing the differences of individual behaviors in the process of climate change adaptation. However, the actual role of social capital in adapting to climate change has not been thoroughly explored. In this paper, we took the high-frigid ecological vulnerable areas on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau as an example. Based on household survey data, we explored the impacts of social networks, social trust and social norms on the choice of climate change adaptation strategies for farmers. Results show that more than 80% of farmers adopt the necessary climate change adaptation strategies. Early transferring/adjusting farming season, artificial grass planting and reducing livestock are their major adaptation strategies. There are significant differences in adopting climate change adaptation strategies between farmers with different social networks, social trust and social norms. The improvements of formal social networks, interpersonal trust, institutional trust, and social norms have significant impacts on the choice of climate change adaptation strategies for farmers. However, the enhancement of informal social networks has a negative impact on it. Finally, we provided suggestions to formulate and implement effective climate change adaptation strategies for areas that sensitive to climate changes.

Introduction

Climate change is a major global challenge in the 21st century, which has an irreversible impact on the sustainable development of natural ecosystems and human society. As the occurrence frequency of extreme weather events increases, the risks to human society also increase(Wang et al., 2020, WEF, 2019). Due to the negative impacts of climate change, the climate change adaptation has become a global issue (IPCC, 2014; UN, 2015). This not only reduces exposure and sensitivity to climate changes, but also improves the adaptability of socio-ecological system (Zilberman et al., 2012). However, due to the different background of physical geography and human geography, there are different risks of climate change in different countries, regions or groups. Especially, those marginalized or poor people highly dependent on natural resources in developing countries may be the first to suffer the effects of climate changes (Zhao, 2014; Jin et al., 2015; Dapilah et al., 2020). The ‘Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ also emphasizes that the ability of people in developing countries should be improved to mitigate and adapt to climate change, with emphasis on improving the resilience of women, youth, local communities and marginalized communities (UN, 2015). Therefore, adopting necessary climate change adaptation strategies and improving risk response capacity are the key to achieving sustainable development for rural communities in developing countries (Jayne et al., 2010; Gong et al., 2018).

Since the 1990s, the research of adaptation has become a hot topic in the fields of global environmental change and sustainable development. The focus of climate change adaptive research is on stakeholders, such as government, enterprises and farmers, and emphasizes the response to specific climate changes or expects climate change impacts. The ultimate goal is to find a way to improve the resilience of stakeholders to climate changes and disasters (IPCC, 2014; Adger, 2003). Therefore, adaptation is a successful strategy for individuals or groups to cope with environmental changes, aimed at eliminating environmental risks and achieving socio-ecological sustainability (Nelson et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2018). However, the selection of climate change adaptation strategies is a complex process with the combined action of subjective and objective factors. It is affected or constrained not only by local governments, social media, institutions and laws, but also by individual cognitive, emotional and family assets (Ajzen, 1991; Hopping et al., 2016). In previous studies, researchers mostly focused on measuring or assessing the vulnerability, resilience or adaptation of a region or community under the impact of climate changes through objective factors (Greene, 2018, Masud et al., 2017), such as demographic and socio-economic factors, resources and technologies factors, institutional and political factors, etc. However, researchers underestimated the impact of socio-cultural factors and psychological factors in climate change adaptation, such as values, social networks, social trust, norms (Adger et al., 2009; O'Brien and Wolf, 2010; Neef et al., 2018), and paid little attention to the role in the choice of climate change adaptation strategies (Ireland and Thomalla, 2011; Fletcher et al., 2020). In the ‘Pacific Adaptive Capacity Analysis Framework’ developed by Warrick et al. (2017), authors reported that belief systems, values, and social networks should be considered as important determinants of adaptation. Therefore, during the research of climate change adaptation, human factors and individual behaviors should be paid more attention. This not only promotes the communication and collaboration among groups, but also provides policy references to the regional climate change adaptation (Xu and Cheng, 2008).

From the perspective of social capital, this study focuses on the role of social networks, social trust and social norms in the selection of climate change adaptation strategies. We aimed to find out how social networks, social trust and social norms affect the choice of climate change adaptation strategies for farmers in high-frigid ecological vulnerable areas. This provides a reference to formulate and implement effective climate change adaptation strategies for climate change sensitive communities in developing countries. In addition, it provides important practical evidences for the study of social capital in climate change adaptation. This paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces the background of climate change adaptation strategies. Section 2 introduces the theoretical framework for the influence of social networks, social trust and social norms on adaptation strategies. Section 3 describes the study area, research methods and data collection processes. Section 4 examines the effects of social networks, social trust and social norms on the selection of climate change adaptation strategies for farmers. Section 5 discusses the empirical results. Section 6 outlines the main conclusions and policy implications.

Section snippets

Theoretical framework

As an important entry point for sustainable development research, social capital has attracted widespread attention from the whole society, especially in rural development (Tiwari et al., 2019; Wu and Liu, 2020). The current dispute over the concept of social capital continues. However, with the deepening of research, researchers have reached a consensus on the main dimensions of it. This includes social network, trust and norms (Putnam, 2001; Michelini, 2013; Saptutyningsih et al., 2020), and

Study area

Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (GTAP) is chosen as the study area, which is a city-level administrative district located in the transitional region between the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the western Loess Plateau (Fig. 1). It is composed of seven counties and one city, with the total area of approximately 45,000 km2 and a total population of 748,600. This area has a complex topography and geological structure and the altitude is higher than 3000 m for most of the

The major adaptation strategies of farmers

To mitigate the impact of climate change risks, more than 80% of the local farmers adopt necessary climate change adaptation strategies (Fig. 2). The adaptation strategy chosen by the most farmers is early transferring/adjusting farming season, followed by artificial grass cultivation and reduction of livestock stocks. The interviewed households who chose these three adaptation strategies accounted for 24.3%, 23.4% and 22.4%, respectively. However, there are still 19.1% respondents do not adopt

Discussion

Social networks have been widely recognized as key factors in promoting climate change adaptation, reducing risks and achieving sustainable livelihoods for farmers (Moore and Westley, 2011; Rockenbauch and Sakdapolrak, 2017; Rotberg, 2013). Our study is consistent with this. However, unlike previous studies, this study indicates that the formal social networks have a positive impact on climate change adaptation strategies among local farmers, and the informal social networks have a negative

Conclusions and policy implications

The selection of climate change adaptation strategies has become an important measure for human society to avoid global environmental risks, reduce socio-ecological system vulnerability and achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals. In addition to the objective factors, such as the social demographic characteristics, location conditions, and policy accessibility, our research found that the choice of climate change adaptation strategies for farmers is also affected by social

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Nature Sciences Foundation of China [Grant Nos. 41971268, 41661115, 41901150]. We are also grateful to the local governments of Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture for providing valuable data and help with our fieldwork.

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