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Summary Rural households in the developing world increasingly participate in urban and broader economies. While nonfarm income may reduce their dependence on climate-reliant agricultural activities, how the diversification of income and livelihoods affects rural households’ vulnerability is complex because of many interacting stressors at play. This study uses household survey data collected in the Poyang Lake area of China—a region historically vulnerable to flooding—to analyze rural vulnerability against the background of state-led development. We look at the three components of climate vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, and focus on examining households’ allocations of assets and labor to illustrate the complex processes that affect rural livelihoods and households’ adaptive capacity. We find that overall sensitivity to flooding has been reduced, particularly for those households with relatively high exposure. These changes suggest increased adaptive capacity and reduced flood vulnerability relative to the commune period and are the result of two main processes. First, the livelihoods of rural households have become increasingly differentiated amid broad industrial and urban development; and second, the presence of regional flood risk management has reduced exposure for agriculture-oriented households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Further increasing grain production and rural household income is a major challenge for rural development in China, and the current small scale of farming operations is an important factor limiting progress on both. The Chinese central government's recent approach to promoting rural development addresses the role of land rental markets in facilitating larger-scale farming operations. We use an agent-based model that represents livelihood decision-making of rural households to explore the effects of an alternative policy that subsidizes rural households that rent out their land-use rights for long terms in comparison with the current policy of subsidizing grain producers. The model is built upon our empirical analysis of social surveys and interviews in eight villages around Poyang Lake. We consider policy impacts in terms of economic performance and equality. The modeling results suggest that policy responses differ considerably between villages with poor, average, and good farmland resources, and the rental-subsidy policy is expected to be most effective at stimulating land rental markets in villages with average farmland resources. The rental subsidies are likely to move the agricultural system to a more productive state with more growth potential and less cost in most places. The rental-subsidy policy can also make every household in farmland-poor places better off and may be used to further address inequality in farmland resources. However, both policies show limited effects on increasing rural income, suggesting rural development will continue to depend on urbanization. We discuss how the government may use the rental subsidy as an instrument to facilitate urbanization to best benefit all rural households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As rural households worldwide become increasingly engaged in urban economies and regional and global markets, agricultural land use is increasingly under influences of macrolevel forces. Investigating the cross-scale processes behind land-use decisions of rural households is important for understanding the deferential effects of macrolevel forces across local social and environmental contexts. We combined quantitative analysis of household surveys and qualitative analysis of interviews and participant observations in eight villages in the Poyang Lake Region of China to investigate how macrolevel forces associated with policy reforms in China (i.e., urban job markets and agricultural markets) interact with microlevel factors (i.e., the biophysical environment, location, and household demographics) to shape land-use decisions of rural households. We also found differential regional government interventions that reinforced preexisting biophysical conditions to affect household crop choices, contributing to the maintenance of intensive two-season rice production in select agricultural bases. Our use of multilevel modeling and qualitative analysis enabled an improved understanding of the cross-scale processes behind household land-use decisions, which has practical implications for securing food production and promoting sustainable land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Less developed places that are affected by climatic impacts face great challenges to future development. Place-based assessments that look at both the development level and climatic impacts on development are important for understanding the current state of human well-being and generating insights into how to facilitate sustainable development in the future. We carry out an assessment of human well-being in the Poyang Lake Region of China (PLR), using GIS, remote sensing, and socio-economic data. We measure human well-being in three aspects of (i) development level, (ii) exposure of development to flooding, and (iii) sensitivity of development to flooding. Following the United Nations Development Programme's human development index, we examine development through measures of life expectancy, literacy, and income. We first use a digital elevation model and GIS data on levees to map flood hazard in PLR. Based on the flood hazard map, we then derive quantitative measures of exposure and sensitivity of the development in a town to flooding. Our assessment indicates that development in PLR overall is highly exposed and sensitive to flooding. There are significant variations in different aspects of human well-being among the 298 towns in the region. These variations suggest different sustainable development pathways and policy interventions for different places. We discuss the potential usefulness of our approach for other similar places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]