Land degradation, especially natural forest land degradation (NFLD), is a severe environmental concern in China. This natural disaster itself and its derivative control policies have caused some impacts on surrounding farmers’ livelihood level and strategies, but the literature on the sustainable livelihood of different households in NFLD vulnerability is limited, and there is an urgent need to bridge the gap and conduct studies on the sustainable livelihood of Changting, Libo, Lixian, Menghai and Wuxi, the typical NFLD-prone areas in China. A new livelihood sustainability index (LSI) including livelihood asset, livelihood strategy and sustainability engagement is constructed to assess the basic situation. The results showed that: (1) The overall LSI of five NFLD areas was not high, and the social, financial and natural assets, in particular, were relatively low. A disparity was found among the five areas, and the rank sequence of the LSI value was sorted in a descending order: Changting > Menghai > Libo > Lixian > Wuxi. (2) In detail, farmers in Changting had the relative highest LSI because of the inherent high value of livelihood assets, which constrain the scores of the livelihood strategy and sustainability engagement. (3) Households in Libo, Menghai and Lixian had middle level LSI scores. The relative low livelihood assets in Libo and Menghai drove parts of local farmers to carry out off-farm/forestry employment, leading to high scores of livelihood strategy, while farmers in Lixian had lower livelihood diversification scores and higher sustainability engagement due to their working content for the local forestry bureau. (4) The low scores of the livelihood asset and sustainability engagement restricted farmers in Wuxi. A discussion of LSI in the NFLD vulnerability was conducted to determine the characteristics and analyze the reasons. Accordingly, targeted policy recommendations were proposed to realize a sustainable livelihood in NFLD areas.

In order to tackle increasingly serious environmental problems, China has been promoting the development of a green economy and guiding the green transformation of various regions and industries through environmental regulation in recent years. By participating in international trade, Hebei Province has been embedded in the global value chain. However, Hebei’s involvement in the high-energy-consuming and polluting manufacturing sector and its lower position in the global value chain have led to serious environmental issues. In practice, the government has promulgated environmental regulations to restrict economic activities of enterprises. What role does environmental regulation play in Hebei’s manufacturing industry’s participation in the global value chain? In order to explore the impact of environmental regulation on Hebei’s manufacturing industry in the global value chain, this paper constructs a fixed-effect econometric model based on the panel data of the embedding level of the value chain of 12 manufacturing sectors in Hebei Province. The research results show that: first, the R & D capacity of the manufacturing industry in Hebei Province still needs to be improved. Second, environmental regulation has promoted the global value chain position of Hebei’s 12 manufacturing sectors. Third, environmental regulation will show obvious heterogeneity to manufacturing industries with different capital intensities and different pollution levels. The impact of environmental regulation on the manufacturing industry with different intensities is different. Therefore, the government should formulate targeted environmental regulation to promote the position of Hebei’s manufacturing industry in the global value chain, such as further improving environmental regulation and increasing the intensity of environmental regulation and increasing the investment of human capital, and cultivating innovative talents.