Environmental protection and social economic development of Grassland in North China under Climate change

Climate change has become a global issue attracted board public attention. It is an urgent research task for us to bring it back in the concrete local context of its social economic impacts and responses .Grassland in North China is an important ecological zone with high environmental vulnerability. Local natural resources were characterized by high variability and uncertainty which is enhanced by Climate change. This research program is based on multi-sites fieldwork and tries to answer the following question through six case studies in six typical ecological regions. 1) What are the local manifestations of Climate change? How local people understand and perceive these changes? 2) What kind of polices were developed by governments in different levels to response environmental risks? How these policies themselves impact the environment and local social economic development? 3) In the local community level, with aggravation of environmental and social economic risks, how local people adapt and response to the increasing uncertainty? This program will organize natural scientists and social scientists as a cooperative research team, and try to improve our understanding of the interactive relation between nature and society through this interdisciplinary study and finally promote the building of social resilience which is good for sustainable development.