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In various regions in Southeast Asia, over the past decades, natural tropical forests have rapidly been converted into monoculture plantations of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), a consequence of the rubber boom. With the goal of slowing the ecologically and environmentally detrimental conversion of forests to rubber plantations and to encourage the reconversion of rubber plantations back to close-to-nature rainforests, we developed a theoretical combined market and government payment system. To evaluate the potential impacts of such system, we carried out a simulation study plus sensitivity analyses, using the latest land-use data from Xishuangbanna, Southwest China. The results of this simulation suggest that the payment system may make the annual reconversion rate develop from 9,009 ha to 4,610 ha over the modeled period from 2021 to 2050, so that the total reconversion area by 2050 would sum up to 197,902 ha. The total net present value (NPV) of compensatory payments for the whole period, in this case, would sum up to US$3.19 billion. The total carbon sequestration benefit resulting from the replacement of rubber plantations would be 11.37 million tons of carbon (tC) over the modelled period, translating into a cost of US$280.44 per tC. Sensitivity analyses revealed that higher variations in rubber prices cause more difficulty in determining compensatory payment. Of course, changes in a number of factors may lead to a reduction of the total NPV of compensatory payments, including increases in the carbon price or traditional medicine price, increases in the discount rate, and decreases to the rubber price and the targeted final reconversion rate. The area-specific compensatory payments ($11,154–$16,106/ha) and area-specific carbon sequestration (46.39–57.45 tC/ha) would then increase linearly as the targeted final reconversion rate increases. This new integrated payment system has the potential to contribute to restoring rainforest in rubber monoculture-dominated landscape.

The sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) highlights the positive relationship between a broad portfolio of household livelihood capitals and adaptive capacity to climate change. However, the SLF overlooks the interactions and transformations that occur between different types of capital. To test our hypothesis that complementarity-substitution exists between the five livelihood capitals, and that only increasing complementary capital can improve adaptive capacity, we assessed the adaptive capacity of apple farmers to drought events in the Loess Plateau, China. This was done through a substitutive-complementary analysis of the relationships between social, human, physical, natural, and financial capital. Using Pearson’s correlation analysis, we tested the impact of 13 livelihood capital indicators on farmers’ adaptive capacity. We found that some forms of capital have a substitutive effect, some have a complementary effect, and others have both. It is the overall product of these complementary indicators that increases adaptive capacity. We conclude that a substitutive-complementary approach can enhance our understanding of the role of livelihood capital in reducing farmers’ vulnerability and strengthen approaches to increasing adaptive capacity.

Although enhancing resilience is a well-recognized adaptation to climate change, little research has been undertaken on the dynamics of resilience. This occurs because complex relationships exist between adaptive capacity and resilience, and some issues also create challenges related to the construction, operation, and application of resilience. This study identified the dynamics of temporal, spatial changes of resilience found in a sample of wheat–drought resilience in Australia’s wheat–sheep production zone during 1991–2010. I estimated resilience using principal component analysis, mapped resilience and its components, distinguished resilient and sensitive regions, and provided recommendations related to improving resilience. I frame that resilience is composed of social resilience including on- and off-site adaptive capacity as well as biophysical resilience including resistance and absorption. I found that resilience and its components have different temporal trends, spatial shifts and growth ratios in each region during different years, which results from complicated interactions, such as complementation and substitution among its components. In wheat-sheep zones, I recommend that identifying regional bottlenecks, science-policy engagement, and managing resilience components are the priorities for improving resilience.

Scientific Reports 6: Article number: 33744; published online: 27 September 2016; updated: 12 January 2017 This Article contains typographical errors in Equation (1). should read

Although the integrated indicator methods have become popular for assessing vulnerability to climate change, their proliferation has introduced a confusing array of scales and indicators that cause a science-policy gap. I argue for a clear adaptation pathway in an “integrative typology” of regional vulnerability that matches appropriate scales, optimal measurements and adaptive strategies in a six-dimensional and multi-level analysis framework of integration and typology inspired by the “5W1H” questions: “Who is concerned about how to adapt to the vulnerability of what to what in some place (where) at some time (when)?” Using the case of the vulnerability of wheat, barley and oats to drought in Australian wheat sheep zones during 1978–1999, I answer the “5W1H” questions through establishing the “six typologies” framework. I then optimize the measurement of vulnerability through contrasting twelve kinds of vulnerability scores with the divergence of crops yields from their regional mean. Through identifying the socioeconomic constraints, I propose seven generic types of crop-drought vulnerability and local adaptive strategy. Our results illustrate that the process of assessing vulnerability and selecting adaptations can be enhanced using a combination of integration, optimization and typology, which emphasize dynamic transitions and transformations between integration and typology.

The paper presents a game model of informational competition between an activist and a listed company in the environmental system, and proposes that in an equilibrium, the listed company discloses favorable information and hides unfavorable information, whereas the activist exposes what the company hide after filtering the collected information, and the media reports what they have found after an investigation with the bias toward regulation. It supports the spirit of the actual legislation and provides insights about several formal channels for the NGO to participate in the regulation for the environmental system.

Vulnerability assessments have often invoked sustainable livelihoods theory to support the quantification of adaptive capacity based on the availability of capital-social, human, physical, natural, and financial. However, the assumption that increased availability of these capitals confers greater adaptive capacity remains largely untested. We quantified the relationship between commonly used capital indicators and an empirical index of adaptive capacity (ACI) in the context of vulnerability of Australian wheat production to climate variability and change. We calculated ACI by comparing actual yields from farm survey data to climate-driven expected yields estimated by a crop model for 12 regions in Australia's wheat-sheep zone from 1991-2010. We then compiled data for 24 typical indicators used in vulnerability analyses, spanning the five capitals. We analyzed the ACI and used regression techniques to identify related capital indicators. Between regions, mean ACI was not significantly different but variance over time was. ACI was higher in dry years and lower in wet years suggesting that farm adaptive strategies are geared towards mitigating losses rather than capitalizing on opportunity. Only six of the 24 capital indicators were significantly related to adaptive capacity in a way predicted by theory. Another four indicators were significantly related to adaptive capacity but of the opposite sign, countering our theory-driven expectation. We conclude that the deductive, theory-based use of capitals to define adaptive capacity and vulnerability should be more circumspect. Assessments need to be more evidence-based, first testing the relevance and influence of capital metrics on adaptive capacity for the specific system of interest. This will more effectively direct policy and targeting of investment to mitigate agro-climatic vulnerability. Refereed/Peer-reviewed