Moderating effects of grassland ecological compensation policy in linking climatic risk and farmers' livelihood resilience in China

Abstract

China is harmonizing the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature through efforts to implement grassland ecological compensation policies (GECP), which have triggered changes in the resilience of farmers' livelihoods within grassland ecosystems. This study examines the direct impacts of climate change on the livelihood resilience of farm households and the direct and moderating effects of GECP on livelihood resilience by constructing a robust empirical strategy using sample data from a multi-year tracking of the regions where GECP was implemented. The results showed that the level of livelihood resilience of farm households showed an increasing trend during the period 2010–2019, buffering capacity and learning capacity are important components in the livelihood resilience of farm households, and higher temperatures and reduced precipitation have negative impacts on the livelihood resilience of farm households. The direct effect of GECP implementation significantly increased the level of livelihood resilience of farm households in the second cycle, but GECP was shown to play a significant moderating role in the relationship between climate change risk and livelihood resilience. The policy moderating effect attenuated the impact of climate change risk on the resilience of farmers' livelihoods and was more pronounced for farmers in husbandry-oriented livelihood strategies. Subsidy intensity is a key factor influencing the moderating effect, more so among farmers with lower levels of resilience and livestock-reducing production decisions. Enhancing the diversity and precision of subsidies is a future direction of improvement for GECP.