Natural Hazards

, Volume 89, Issue 2, pp 801–815 | Cite as

The roles of community assets in mitigating the impact of drought on grain yields in Northwest China

Original Paper
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Abstract

As an arid and semiarid region in that is frequently hit by drought, Northwest China is ecologically vulnerable. Faced with drought and other extreme events, policy makers have given top priority to the formulation and implementation of adaptation policies. This paper investigates the roles of community assets, including community social capital and access to public services, in mitigating the impact of drought in Northwest China. Based on a micro-level dataset of individual households and villages from two provinces, we find a major effect of community assets on grain yields, after controlling for other influences. Our econometric analyses show that the severity of drought in the study areas significantly reduces grain yields. The negative impact of drought, however, can be significantly mitigated in villages with better community assets. Several policies, including enhancing investments in communities’ infrastructure and providing public services related to drought, are recommended to both improve local adaptive capacity to drought and reduce poverty in the drought-prone areas.

Keywords

Drought Community assets Adaptation Grain yields Econometric analysis Northwest China 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (71503276, 71431006), Ministry of Education (16JZD013), and Natural Sciences Foundation of Hunan in China (2016JJ3156) for this research.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of BusinessCentral South UniversityChangshaChina
  2. 2.Resource-Conserving and Environment-Friendly Society and Ecological Civilization 2011 Collaborative Innovation Center of Hunan ProvinceChangshaChina
  3. 3.Key Laboratory of Hunan Province for Mobile Business IntelligenceHunan University of CommerceChangshaChina

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