The Effects of Natural Capital Protection on Pastoralist's Livelihood and Management Implication in the Source Region of the Yellow River, China

The interaction among different livelihood capitals is a key to generate a deeper understanding of the livelihood sustainability. In this paper, we use net income per capita (economic capital), meat and milk production per capita (physical capital), and areas of fenced pasture, livestock shelter, grassland rodent control and planted grassland (physical capital) as proxy indicators of livelihood promotion, livelihood provision, and livelihood protection respectively. By developing a correlation model between pastoralists' livelihood protection and improvement, we found that (1) there is a statistically significant correlation between the pastoralists' livelihood protection and promotion; (2) based on the maximum effect of pastoralists' livelihood promotion and provision, there is a benchmark in the effect of the intervention intensity of livelihood capital (grassland resource protection) on livelihood improvement; (3) on basis of two indicators, i.e. net income per capita and meat production per capita, the reasonable scales of fenced pasture, livestock shelter and planted grassland are less than 843, 860 and 46 thousand hectares (hm²) per year respectively. With the marginal effect of livelihood protection, moderately decreased areas of fenced pasture and planted grassland, and increased area of livestock shelter is a critical to ensure pastoralist's livelihood sustainability.