An Assessment of Drought Status in Kermanshah Township and an Investigation of Livelihood Capitals Influencing Farmers’ Resilience against Drought in the Region

Document Type : Original Research

Authors
S. Ghobadi
H. Farhadian
K. Kahrizi
Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran.
10.22034/JAST.26.6.1163
Abstract
Climate change is one of the most important challenges that influence different parts of human life. An important consequence of climate change is its effects on water resources and the occurrence of drought. Since the agricultural sector is influenced by drought, the present research aimed to evaluate the livelihood resilience of farmers to drought in Kermanshah Township, Iran. The research used both primary and secondary data. First, the drought status of Kermanshah Township was evaluated with Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Percent of Normal Index (PNI) and the Drought Indices Calculator (DIC) software package for a 51-year statistical period. Based on the results, the years 1973, 1978, 1979, 1995, 1999, 2001, 2008, 2013, and 2015 were dry. It was observed that, as we approached 2020, the number of years with a negative SPI increased. Then, the dimensions of livelihood capital were studied with the focus group method in the form of three focus groups from the perspective of 19 key experts. Data in this phase were analyzed by the content analysis method. The output of this phase was the development of a questionnaire for the final phase. Finally, to check the livelihood capitals influencing the enhancement of farmers’ resilience to drought in the region, 380 farmers were selected by the multistage sampling method. The potential of the independent variables in accounting for the variance in the farmers’ livelihood resilience was checked by stepwise multivariate linear regression. Based on the results, the variables of financial capital, social capital, and human capital with beta values of, respectively, 0.378, 0.324, and 0.152 had the greatest role in capturing the variance in farmers’ resilience to drought in Kermanshah Township.

Keywords

Subjects

1. Aldrich, D. P and Meyer, M. A. 2015. Social capital and community resilience. Journal of Community Resilience Theory, 59 (2): 254-269.
2. Adzawla, W., Kudadze, S., RashadMohammed, A., IssakaIbrahim, I. 2019. Climate perceptions, farmers’ willingness-to-insure farms and resilience to climate change in Northern region, Ghana. Environmental Development, 32.
3. Ao, Y., Tan, L., Feng, Q., Tan, L., Li, H., Wang, Y & Chen, Y. 2022. Livelihood Capital Effects on Famers’ Strategy Choices in Flood-Prone Areas—A Study in Rural China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(12), 7535.‏
4. Atube, F., Malinga, G.M., Martine, N., Okello, D.M., Okello-Uma. 2021. I Determinants of smallholder farmers’ adaptation strategies to the effects of climate change: Evidence from northern Uganda. Agric. Food Secur. 2021.10 (6).
5. Burchfield, E., Williams, N.E. and Carrico, A.R. 2018. Rescaling drought mitigation in rural Sri Lanka. Regional Environmental Change. 18(8): 2495-2503.
6. Canetti, D., Waismel-Manor, I., Cohen, N and Rapaport, C. (2014). What does national resilience mean in a democracy? Evidence from the United States and Israel. Armed Forces and Society, 40 (3): 504-520.
7. Ghobadi Aliabadi, S., Agahi, H., Farhadian, H. 2022. Farmers' Perceptions of Climate Change Risk: Comparing the Accuracy of Farmers’ Perceptions with Meteorological Data in Kermanshah Township. JAST 2022; 24 (4): 811-823.
8. IPCC. 2013. Predictions of temperature changes in 2020-2029 and 2090-2099 by GCMs. 2013: 30-43.
9. IPCC. 2022. Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Working Group Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. 2022.
10. Kuntke, F., Linsner, S., Steinbrink, E., Franken, J., & Reuter, C. (2022). Resilience in Agriculture: Communication and Energy Infrastructure Dependencies of German Farmers. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 13(2), 214-229.‏
11. Mavhura, E., 2017. Applying a systems-thinking approach to community resilience analysis using rural livelihoods: the case of Muzarabani district, Zimbabwe.International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 25, 248-258.
12. Masson -Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S. L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y., Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M. I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J. B. R., Maycock, T. K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R. and Zhou, B. 2021. Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6, Cambridge University Press.
13. Meteorological organizations of Iran. 2022. National Drought and Crisis Management Center. Report number: 136.
14. Karimi, M., Sharifi, L., & Torkaman, M. 2021. Economic Evaluation of Agricultural Sector in Fars Province as a Result of Climate Change. Geography and Environmental Planning, 32(1):119-136.
15. Reddy, K.V., Paramesh, V., Arunachalam, V., Das, B., Ramasundaram, P., Pramanik, M., Sridhara, S., Reddy, D.D., Alataway, A., Dewidar, A.Z., et al. 2022. Farmers’ Perception and Efficacy of Adaptation Decisions to Climate Change. Agronomy 2022, 12, 1023:1-18.
16. Slijper, T., Urquhart, J., Poortvliet, M., Soriano, B., Miranda, P., Meuwissen., M. 2022. Exploring how social capital and learning are related to the resilience of Dutch arable farmers. Agricultural Systems, 198.
17. Shikwambana, S., Malaza, N. 2022. Enhancing the Resilience and Adaptive Capacity of Smallholder Farmers to Drought in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. Conservation 2022, 2: 435-449.
18. UN. The Paris Agreement: United Nations; 2022. https://www.un.org/en/climate change/paris -agree ment Accessed September 12, 2022.
19. Umer Arshad, M., Yunfeng, Z., Hanif, S., Fatima, F. 2022. Impact of Climate Change and Technological Advancement on Cotton Production: Evidence from Xinjiang Region, China. JAST 2022; 24 (6):1519-1531.
20. Wang, W., Zhao, X., Li, H., Zhang, Q. 2021. Will social capital affect farmers’ choices of climate change adaptation strategies? Evidences from rural households in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China. Journal of Rural Studies. 83: 127-137.
21. Yousefi, H., Pirbazari, S., Moridi, A., Khajehpour, H., Sadat Karbasi, H., Fathi, T. 2022. Investigating Temperature Variation due to Climate Change in Iran. Water and Irrigation Management, 11(2): 237-248.
Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology
Volume 26, Issue 6
November and December 2024
Pages 1163-1175