Vulnerability Assessment Of Ethnic Rural Communities To Climate Change

Global climate change has brought unprecedented challenges to rural Social-Ecosystem.Ethnic minority rural communities are closely related to natural resources and environment.Hani rural communities in China with abundant traditional management knowledge successfully coped with extreme drought climate event in 2010.They use local natural resources such as forests,terraces,water and management community diversely to adapt to climate change flexibility.Therefore,exploring the adaptive management to climate change of Hani rural community and assessing its vulnerability to climate change quantitatively are of great significance for climate change adaptation strategies formulation and regional sustainable development.This paper takes Hani minority rural community in Yuanyang County and Honghe County of Honghe Prefecture,Yunnan Province as an example.Firstly,the facts and impacts of climate change,the characteristics of Hani Society-Ecosystem and the status of adaptive management are investigated by means of questionnaire survey,in-depth interviews and memorabilia;Secondly,the "exposure-sensitivity-adaptability" research framework and vulnerability evaluation system are constructed.The vulnerability of Hani social-ecosystem to climate change is assessed and analyzed by fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method.Finally,adaptive strategies to climate change are put forward based on the current adaptive management situation and vulnerability assessment results.The results show that:(1)climate change exposure of Hani's Social-Ecosystem is high,the temperature and rainfall climate factors are abnormal,and natural disasters such as extreme drought and floods occur frequently,which threaten the production and life of Hani rural communities.(2)The social-ecosystem sensitivity of the Hani's Social-Ecosystem is relatively low,which benefits from the integrated Hani's "forest-water-village-terrace" complex social-ecosystem and the traditional adaptive resources management.(3)The adaptability of Hani's Social-Ecosystem is relatively weak,and the participation of ditch management participation is not so high.Social capital and human capital are the important factors that restrict the adaptability of Hani minority.(4)Under the pressure of climate change with high climate change exposure,the vulnerability of Hani community-ecosystem is at a low level,and the internal structure of vulnerability in different regions is obviously differentiated.