Political Pressures Increased Vulnerability to Climate Hazards for Nomadic Livestock in Inner Mongolia, China

Ang Li,Shi Chen,Xueyao Zhang,Jianhui Huang

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-08686-4

Abstract

Herders in Inner Mongolia experienced two completely different political periods during their last nomadic period between 1961 and 1986. However, climate and technical factors were very similar between these two periods according to statistical analyses. We retrieved historical climate and livestock population data and performed a retrospective study using generalized additive models to analyze three major livestock population demographic metrics changes between these two periods. We found that the sociopolitical factors significantly impacted all three major demographic metrics (adult mortality, neonatal mortality and birthrate) between the two periods for both large (cattle, horse, and camel) and small livestock (sheep and goat). We also identified the interaction effects between sociopolitical factor and climate factors for adult and neonatal mortality, while birthrate was not affected by these interactions. When exposed to climate hazards, adult and neonatal livestock mortality rates were significantly higher, while birthrate was significantly lower in social movement period than in peaceful period. We concluded that political movements had indeed increased the vulnerability of herders’ livestock to climate hazards. External political pressures deprived hazard-resistance entitlements of herders, which may explain the elevated effects of political pressures on livestock vulnerability.

Highlights

Climate hazard is just one component of the vulnerability for the socio-ecological system, where people can anticipate, cope with, and resist the adverse impacts of climate[13, 14]
Interactions between Standardized Precipitation Evapotransporation Index (SPEI) and sociopolitical factors, as well as the interactions between snow depth and sociopolitical factors were significant too. These results suggested that SPEI and snow depth could intermingle with sociopolitical factors, while early spring temperature did not interact with political pressures
We combined a unique time series dataset with rigorous statistical analyses to quantify the effects of climate and sociopolitical factors on herders’ livestock population demography in Inner Mongolia, China

Summary

Introduction

Climate hazard is just one component of the vulnerability for the socio-ecological system, where people can anticipate, cope with, and resist the adverse impacts of climate[13, 14]. The general steps of these methods start from a group of competing hypotheses, using statistical methods for data analysis, and evaluating whether to accept a hypothesis based on certain statistics This quantitative method can further integrate social-political information as well as long-term and broad historical data. The government had gradually introduced modern machinery and a communal economic system into urban areas of Inner Mongolia, herders had maintained their nomadic traditions and fought against adverse climates, such as blizzards and droughts, with their traditional knowledge and less developed infrastructure. This period was the “last nomadic period” of Inner Mongolia[3, 24]

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Conclusion