Disaster Resettlement and Adaptive Capacity among Rural Households in China

It has long been thought that the implementation of resettlement programs should focus on livelihood reconstruction in the long run rather than just concentrating on material compensation. There is to date little empirical evidence of the extent to which disaster resettlement may affect household adaptive capacity (HAC) in rural communities. To explore whether and how disaster resettlement is shaping HAC, this article conceptualizes and measures adaptive capacity at the household level using household surveys in rural China. An indicator-based framework is adopted to identify and evaluate HAC. The results indicate that resettlement and its consequences have a significant negative impact on HAC. Although resettlement appears to have a central place in development projects in China, we provide evidence that it leads to reducing rather than improving household capacity to adapt to natural disasters.