Increasingly severe drought has not only threatened food security but also resulted in massive socio-economic losses. In the face of increasingly serious drought conditions, the question of how to mitigate its impacts through appropriate measures has received great attention. However, the current level of knowledge is not sufficient to support the implementation of China’s national plan on adaptation to drought and other extreme weather events.

The major problem is that most existing studies focusing on a qualitative analysis in China. In addition, most of the publications are based on local case studies, seldom drawing on a larger sample survey covering more than one province. Despite the rich information provided by the qualitative studies, it is difficult to provide robust evidence to support the adaptation policies in China.

Based on a large-scale household and village survey conducted in six provinces nationwide, Dr.CHEN, Prof.WANG Jinxia and Prof. HUANG Jikun from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR)，Chinese Academy of Sciences found that 86% of rural households have taken adaptive measures to protect crop production against drought, most of which are non-engineering measures. In the case of non-engineering measures, changing agricultural production inputs and adjusting seeding or harvesting dates are two popular options.

Importantly, quantitative analysis reveals that government policy support against drought such as releasing early warning information and post-disaster services, technical assistance, financial and physical supports have significantly improved farmers’ ability to adapt to drought.

However, since only 5% of villages benefited from such supports, the government in China still has significant room to implement these assistances. Moreover, having a higher level of social capital in a farm household markedly increases their adaptation capacity against drought.

Further analysis indicates that government policy support related to drought resistance can play an important role in help farmers to adapt measures. The results of this study also have implications for national adaptation plans for agriculture under climate change in other developing countries.

The study has been published in Global Environmental Change (Huang Chen, Jinxia Wang *, Jikun Huang，Policy support, social capital, and farmers’ adaptation to drought in China，Global Environmental Change 2013).