Investigating climate adaptation in semi-arid pastoral social-ecological system: A case in Hulun Buir, China

Abstract

Covering 15% of the Earth's land surface and home to 14% of the global population, semi-arid pastoral regions are characterized by high climatic variability and ecological vulnerability. Inner Mongolia, especially, is one of the regions that are most affected by climate change. In this study, we develop an integrated GIS and agent-based model of semi-arid pastoral social-ecological system (SAPSES) to simulate system responses to various policy and climate situations, using the traditional pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia, China, as a demonstration. Three herdsmen's adaptation strategy experiments and three adaptation policy experiments are designed, each of which is stress-tested under three climate scenarios SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0 to simulate the policy-climate interactive effects on SAPSES. The results show that, under SSP1-2.6 scenario, it is more conducive to sustainable livelihood of pastoral households, improving economic benefits and reducing ecological risks. While under SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0 scenarios, purchasing forage is not an effective way for herdsmen to adapt to climate disasters, which causes grassland degradation, increase ecological risk and reduce economic benefits of SAPSES. For assessing the adaptation policies, herdsman suffers the severest ecological loss and the highest bankruptcy rate under policy experiment a. Privatization, undergoes the medium ecological loss and medium bankruptcy rate under policy experiment b. Privatization with carrying capacity control and subsidy, and experiences the smallest loss and the lowest bankruptcy rate under policy experiment c. Common property management with carrying capacity control and subsidy. The results help inform more robust policy for building climate resilience in semi-arid grassland regions.