Climate change hits the poor and the marginalized hardest around the globe. Low-income communities, people with disabilities, and older or very young people are normally more susceptible to risks posed by climate impacts like extreme heat and humidity, increased volatility of agricultural yields and rising flood risk. Reducing climate-related vulnerability and disadvantage is thus key to global climate justice, as climate impacts may exacerbate inequitable social vulnerability if governments fail to provide appropriate policy support and investment. Social vulnerability to climate change contains multiple dimensions: health vulnerability for children, older and disabled people who are susceptible to climate-relevant diseases due to physical constraints; occupational vulnerability for farmers and fishermen whose livelihood capitals (e.g. crops and marine ecosystem) are most affected by climate change; and geographical vulnerability for migrants forced to leave their homelands destroyed by extreme climate events like floods and wildfire (Kehler &amp; Birchall, 2021).
<h3>China&rsquo;s National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for 2035&nbsp;</h3>
China is one of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, in terms of disaster frequency, lives lost and economic damages (Asian Development Bank, 2021). In the&nbsp;latest-released National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for 2035 (hereinafter referred to as &lsquo;the Strategy&rsquo;), the Chinese government highlights the goals of reducing climate risk impact on vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, chronic patients, people over 65 years old, and the poor. To build up their climate capacity and improve their well-being and resilience for sustainable development, the Strategy sets out key areas, including the establishment of an assessment framework and criteria for population health vulnerability nationwide, and improvement of the digital government technology platforms for disaster early warning and relief.&nbsp;&nbsp;
For a country with high geographic diversity like China, an overarching assessment framework for health vulnerability is essential for evaluating health risks and local resilience under extreme weather and climate events (e.g., heat waves and floods). Nation-wide scientific researches and field works would help identify the needs of vulnerable populations and develop customized local adaptation plans. The Strategy suggests the government complete the compilation of health vulnerability assessment guidelines by 2025. To date, 12 of 31 provincial governments have developed their local climate health adaptation plans, but a national climate health adaptation plan has yet to be published (Cai et al., 2021).&nbsp;
The Strategy also highly values the digital government technology platforms for disaster early warning and relief for vulnerable populations. To date, the Chinese National Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set up an early warning system for heat waves in four cities (located at different latitudes) to provide timely health risk warnings on heatstroke, cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases (Li et al., 2021). Going along with the trend of evolving digital governments in China&rsquo;s transformation, the Strategy suggests local governments further strengthen the digital government-to-citizen (G2C) services (MEE, 2022). The digital platform would allow the families and individuals with high-level climate vulnerability to receive instant warning information through mobile apps and SMS, so they can have more time to take preventative measures or evacuate from disaster-affected areas.&nbsp;
<h3>Recommendations for Future Climate Adaptation Strategies</h3>
Compared to China&rsquo;s first national climate change adaptation strategy released in 2013, the new Strategy pays more attention to vulnerable groups and emphasizes the need to strengthen their abilities to actively prepare for, rather than passively respond to, climate impacts. However, the approaches suggested in the Strategy are limited to policy areas such as public health and risk management. How can the government build resilience for climate migrants, whose lives and environments are threatened? How to promote sustainable livelihoods for those climate-vulnerable groups? To answer the above questions, China should fully integrate its future climate change adaptation strategies with its policy efforts in poverty alleviation and international cooperation projects.&nbsp;
<h3>Poverty Alleviation and Climate Adaptation</h3>
Climate change threatens to undermine efforts to eradicate extreme poverty (Hallegatte &amp; Rozenberg, 2017). While China's practices in poverty alleviation have attracted much attention from the international community, the negative impacts of climate change &ndash; natural disasters caused by extreme weather and reduced food production caused by changing rainfall patterns or rising temperatures &ndash; may easily push those vulnerable populations (especially for those rural population employed in agriculture) back into extreme poverty. Research reveals seasonal droughts will reduce the production of China's three major food crops (rice, wheat and maize) by 8 percent by 2030 (Zhou et al., 2017). To build up rural vulnerable populations' resilience against the threat of climate-related risks, the design of climate adaptation strategies should fully take into account how to reduce the livelihood vulnerability of this group.
Stable employment status and good living conditions are key to sustainable livelihood security in rural areas. To secure employment opportunities in climate-sensitive zones, policies should be designed to promote the sustainability of the agricultural industry. One way to achieve this is to ensure that policies enable farmers to replace crop varieties with better-adapted ones or adopt climate-friendly planting methods (e.g., reducing the planting of crops with high water consumption in arid areas or reinforcing reservoirs and irrigation systems in regions at severe risk of flooding). Another way is for them to assist local governments in expanding livelihood options and creating jobs in activities outside of agriculture (e.g., promoting the farm product processing industry).&nbsp;
For living conditions, governments should provide timely and comprehensive health and nutrition guidelines given how the impacts of climate change on agriculture may put at risk the food supplies of vulnerable populations. It should be noted that China relocated over 9 million people living in poverty away from climate-sensitive zones from 2015-2020 (CGTN, 2020), a decision which has substantially improved the living conditions for these populations. However, their livelihood vulnerability caused by the lack of job security still remains, and should be taken into consideration in the government's design of future climate adaptation strategies.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3>International Cooperation and Climate Adaptation</h3>
China has attached great importance to international cooperation on climate. As the biggest participant in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM, the world&rsquo;s first international carbon finance scheme under the Kyoto Protocol), China registered more than 5000 CDM projects between 2005 and 2014, spreading across its 30 provinces (Xu, 2021). The CDM projects unlocked China&rsquo;s access to international climate finance and low-carbon technology, and more importantly, brought new job opportunities and frontier knowledge on climate change to rural communities (Xu &amp; Zhang, 2022). For example, one biogas development planning project for rural poor households in Sichuan Province provided more than 2000 new long‐term jobs as certified biogas technicians and 8500 new short‐term jobs as part-time workers (up to 10 % or slightly more than 1,000 jobs have been occupied by women) (CDM, 2017). As a result of these international cooperation projects, formally unskilled and low-income rural households were granted access to new sources of income generation, which has in turn significantly improved their social well-being and reduced their livelihood vulnerability.&nbsp;&nbsp;
International cooperation on climate governance facilitates education, dissemination of information, research and increases awareness. In the Sichuan case above, low‐income rural households got access to knowledge on improved waste management systems and sustainable agricultural production practices through on-site coaching (CDM, 2017). To achieve comprehensive resilience-building for these climate-vulnerable populations, training and orientation programs is essential, especially in raising their awareness of climate risk and providing them more livelihood opportunities and adaptive capacity. Other similar strategies may include engaging residents in vulnerability climate assessment, holding communities-based seminars and organizing continuing education or re-skilling activities.
Developing countries often struggle to access international climate finance (OECD, 2021). China&rsquo;s participation in CDM implies the great potential of what international cooperation projects could bring for domestic climate governance. It is therefore important for China, same as other countries in the Global South, to strengthen cooperation with multilateral financial institutions (e.g., World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and New Development Bank) and finance mechanisms (e.g., Green Climate Fund and Global Environment Facility) in getting climate finance support, and to achieve better integration of international climate cooperation and domestic climate change adaptation efforts, especially for those vulnerable groups.&nbsp;
For climate adaptation, there is no such thing as &lsquo;one-size-fits-all&rsquo;. Given the wide differences in geographical environment and social-economic development across regions in China, the climate adaptation strategy for vulnerable groups should be designed with a strong local base and adaptive to the evolving environment. Disparities in exposure to climate change risk across different regions and populations are huge, with the Strategy subdividing the land area into 8 sub-regions on account of diverse natural resources and climate risks encountered (MEE, 2022). Local policy implementation should fully integrate local knowledge and encourage a learning-by-doing approach. The key principle here is to avoid inadaptable policies placing heavier burdens on local vulnerable populations and exacerbating inequities.
<hr>
Reference:
Asian Development Bank. (2021). Climate risk country profile: China. <a href="https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/703641/climate-risk-country-profile-china.pdf">https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/703641/climate-risk-country-profile-china.pdf</a>.
Cai, W., Zhang, C., Zhang, S. et al. (2021). The 2021 China report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: seizing the window of opportunity. Lancet Public Health, 6: e932&ndash;47, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00209-7">https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00209-7</a>
CDM.(2017). Sustainable Development co-Benefits Description Report. <a href="https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/sdcmicrosite/SDC%20Reports/20170324_SDTOOL01_2898_ver2.pdf">https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/sdcmicrosite/SDC%20Reports/20170324_SDTOOL01_2898_ver2.pdf</a>.
CGTN. (2020). More than 9.6 million people resettled in China's poverty alleviation drive.
<a href="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-03/China-resettles-9-6-million-people-for-poverty-relief--VUKk6MQZfa/index.html">https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-03/China-resettles-9-6-million-people-for-poverty-relief--VUKk6MQZfa/index.html</a>.
Hallegatte, S. &amp; Rozenberg, J. (2017). Climate change through a poverty lens. Nature Climate Change, 7, 250&ndash;256. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3253">https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3253</a>.
Kehler, S. &amp; Birchall, S. J. (2021). Social vulnerability and climate change adaptation: The critical importance of moving beyond technocratic policy approaches, Environmental Science &amp; Policy, 124, 471-477. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.025">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.025</a>.
Li, Y., Jin, Y. &amp; Cheng, Y. (2021). Heat wave and health risk early warning systems in China. <a href="https://ghhin.org/assets/case_study_pdf/WHO-WMO_Case_Phase_3_Ch5l.pdf">https://ghhin.org/assets/case_study_pdf/WHO-WMO_Case_Phase_3_Ch5l.pdf</a>
Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE). (2022). National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for 2035. (In Chinese). <a href="https://www.mee.gov.cn/xxgk2018/xxgk/xxgk03/202206/W020220613636562919192.pdf">https://www.mee.gov.cn/xxgk2018/xxgk/xxgk03/202206/W020220613636562919192.pdf</a>.&nbsp;
OECD. (2021). Climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries: aggregate trends updated with 2019 data. <a href="https://www.oecd.org/env/climate-finance-provided-and-mobilised-by-developed-countries-aggregate-trends-updated-with-2019-data-03590fb7-en.htm">https://www.oecd.org/env/climate-finance-provided-and-mobilised-by-developed-countries-aggregate-trends-updated-with-2019-data-03590fb7-en.htm</a>.
Xu, J. (2021). Conflicts in multi‑level governance: an analysis of international climate policy implementation at the sub‑national level. Global Public Policy and Governance, 1, 401&ndash;420, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-021-00029-4">https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-021-00029-4</a>.
&nbsp;Xu, J. &amp; Zhang, Y. (2022). Has the international climate regime promoted climate justice? Evidence from Clean Development Mechanism projects in China, Climate Policy, 22(2), 222-235, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2021.2008294">https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2021.2008294</a>.
Zhou, S., Zhou, W., Lin, G., Chen, J., Jiang, T. &amp; Li, M. (2017), Adapting to climate change: scenario analysis of grain production in China, China Agricultural Economic Review, 9(4), 643-659. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-10-2016-0173">https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-10-2016-0173</a>.

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