Telecoupled Sustainable Livelihoods in an Era of Rural–Urban Dynamics: The Case of China
1
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
2
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
3
Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0B9, Canada
4
School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China
5
Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Hebei University of Water Resources and Electric Engineering, Cangzhou 061001, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(9), 2716; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092716
Received: 28 February 2019
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Revised: 15 April 2019
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Accepted: 30 April 2019
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Published: 13 May 2019
(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)
Recently, increasingly sophisticated studies have investigated the relationship between agrarian livelihoods and the environment, as well as rural–urban interactions in developing countries. The policies developed to respond to these dynamics can constrain livelihood options or provide additional opportunities. In the present study, using a modified version of the telecoupled sustainable livelihood framework to generalize dynamic livelihood strategies in the context of rural–urban transformation and by focusing on recent research in China, we review important factors that shape rural livelihood strategies as well as the types of strategies that typically intersect with livelihood and environmental dynamics. We then examine telecoupled rural–urban linkages given that the dynamics of the livelihood strategies of farmers can cause flows of labor, capital, ecosystem services, and other processes between rural and urban areas, thereby placing livelihood strategies in a dynamic context, which has not been considered widely in previous research. We show that most previous studies focused on the reduction of environmental impacts via livelihood diversification and rural–urban migration. We propose several areas for future policy development and research.
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Keywords:
dynamic livelihood strategy; telecoupling; ecological effect; ecosystem service; rural household livelihood; rural–urban linkage; sustainable livelihood
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MDPI and ACS Style
Peng, W.; Robinson, B.E.; Zheng, H.; Li, C.; Wang, F.; Li, R. Telecoupled Sustainable Livelihoods in an Era of Rural–Urban Dynamics: The Case of China. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2716. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092716
AMA Style
Peng W, Robinson BE, Zheng H, Li C, Wang F, Li R. Telecoupled Sustainable Livelihoods in an Era of Rural–Urban Dynamics: The Case of China. Sustainability. 2019; 11(9):2716. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092716
Chicago/Turabian StylePeng, Wenjia, Brian E. Robinson, Hua Zheng, Cong Li, Fengchun Wang, and Ruonan Li. 2019. "Telecoupled Sustainable Livelihoods in an Era of Rural–Urban Dynamics: The Case of China" Sustainability 11, no. 9: 2716. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092716
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