Livelihood Strategies of Rural Households in Ning’er Earthquake-Stricken Areas, Yunnan Province, China

Benyong Wei,Guiwu Su,Yuling Ma,Yingkui Li

doi:10.3390/su11215905

Abstract

Natural hazards not only cause direct losses of household income and assets but also affect the choice and outcome of livelihood strategies. Based on the questionnaire survey from 2007 on Mw 6.1 Ning’er earthquake-hit areas in Southwest China, we analyzed the relationship between livelihood assets (or capitals) and livelihood strategies of local rural households and identified the main factors influencing the choice of livelihood strategy. The results indicate that statistically significant differences exist in livelihood assets among livelihood strategies. The choice of livelihood strategies is affected significantly by the status of livelihood assets. High financial capitals enable households to engage in higher-returns or capital-intensive livelihood activities. Improving vocational education and skills training for rural residents, especially for the youth, is also important in developing new livelihood strategies beyond their traditional lifestyle. Higher social capitals provide households the opportunity to select a higher return and income livelihood strategy. In addition, as part of efforts to enhance physical capitals, housing construction planning and technical guidance are of critical importance to improve the anti-seismic performance of rural buildings and decrease their livelihood risk in earthquake-prone areas. It is important for farmers to improve and diversify their livelihood strategies according to regional geographical environment and the comparative advantages of their own livelihood assets.

Highlights

The human and economic losses induced by natural disasters has increased considerably over the past decades
The results showed that livelihoods capitals have an increasing trend in all five dimensions, including human, physical, natural, financial and social capitals, after recovering from the earthquake
To quantitatively assess the livelihood capital or asset, we developed a livelihood capital index (LCI) for rural households’ livelihood based on Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) framework

Summary

Introduction

The human and economic losses induced by natural disasters has increased considerably over the past decades. In addition to losses in household income and livelihood assets, natural disasters may influence the choices and outcomes of livelihood strategies [1]. The frequently occurred disasters affect risk perceptions and preferences of local households, limiting or changing their future livelihood choices [2,3]. Developing livelihood adaptation strategies to high-risk environment is beneficial for enhancing livelihood diversity and resilience, maintaining household’s livelihood security and improving livelihood recovery after disasters. The adaptation strategies based on livelihood assets are beneficial for maintaining diverse livelihood choices and improving livelihood resilience [7,8]. Many studies have pointed out that it is important to understand the relationships between livelihood assets, natural disasters and livelihood strategies [8,9,10], the work on quantitatively studying their internal connections is still very scarce [11,12]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion