Measuring farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience in the context of poverty alleviation: a case study from Fugong County, China

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, the sustainable livelihood of farmers has been threatened by various events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which has significantly impacted efforts to alleviate poverty. Therefore, it is vitally important to increase farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience to enhance the stability and sustainability of poverty alleviation efforts. In this study, to scientifically measure and analyze farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience, we designed an analytical framework that captures the characteristics of farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience from the three dimensions of buffer capacity, self-organization capacity, and learning capacity. We then constructed an index system of farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience and a cloud-model-based multi-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model. Finally, the coupling coordination degree and decision tree methods were used to identify the level of development and relationships among the three abovementioned dimensions of farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience. A case study from Fugong County, Yunnan Province, China revealed that the spatial and temporal distributions of farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience were heterogeneous across various regions. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of the coordinated development level of farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience is similar to that of its overall level because the three dimensions of buffer capacity, self-organization capacity, and learning capacity interact with each other and develop synergistically, and the lack of any one of these affects the overall development of farmers’ sustainable livelihood resilience. In addition, the sustainable livelihood resilience of farmers in various villages is in a state of stable promotion, benign promotion, stagnation, mild recession, severe recession, or chaotic period, indicating a lack of balance in terms of the state of development. However, sustainable livelihood resilience will gradually improve in response to targeted support policies formulated by the national or local governments.