Smallholders’ climate change adaptation strategies on the eastern Tibetan Plateau

The effective adaptation of smallholders in regions severely affected by climate change is critical to their survival and development. This study provides insights into the climate change adaptation strategies of smallholders in the Yellow River-Huangshui River Valley (YHV), located on the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP). The YHV is an important food-producing region on the TP. Climate change is threatening the livelihoods of local households. This study uses data from 494 household questionnaires, meteorological station data, and disaster statistics reports collected in the YHV region to understand the climate change adaptation strategies of smallholders and explore the factors that influence their strategies using the multivariate probit (MVP) model. The study found that frequent droughts, wind hail, and floods significantly impact agriculture in the YHV. Smallholders in the YHV adopted six main adaptation strategies to cope with the effects of climate change: crop rotation (88.25%), increasing agricultural inputs (75.30%), changing crop sowing times (61.94%), engaging in off-farm activities (50.20%), expanding cropland areas (32.59%), and raising more livestock (15.99%). The MVP model results indicated that smallholders' perceptions of disasters (drought, wind hail, and flood) have a significant impact on their adaptation strategies. An increase in perceived disasters positively and significantly affected off-farm strategies but negatively affected agricultural adaptation strategies. Although increasing the labor cost of agricultural production, the number of cropland plots to some extent encourages smallholders to adopt agricultural adaptation strategies and discourages the adoption of off-farm activities. Additionally, smallholder adaptation strategies were significantly influenced by various indicators including number of livestock, proportion of agricultural equipment, elevation, and off-farm income. The study proposes targeted policy recommendations to promote sustainable development of local households’ livelihoods. These include strengthening household coping capacities for droughts, wind hail and floods, promoting skills training, encouraging agricultural scaling operations and off-farm livelihood transformation for certain small farmers, and considering the environmental impacts of household adaptational strategies.