A conceptual model for adaptation to climate variability in rangelands

Abstract

Exploiting medicinal plants on rangelands is a climate-sensitive strategy in Iran. In other words, there is an urgent need for the transition toward resilience under current climatic pressures and risks. In addition, a deep understanding about awareness, risk perceptions, and adaptation strategies of different rural groups can play a significant role in the mitigation of climate change impacts and the development of the adaptation capacity. Therefore, the development of a conceptual model for adaptation to climate variability in rangelands was determined as the main purpose of the present study. To this end, we used analysis of awareness, risk perceptions, and adaptation strategies of medicinal plant exploiters toward climate variability. This research was carried out in Sought Khorasan province of Iran, which is one of the climate-sensitive and leading areas for the exploitation of medicinal plants in the country. Required data for this study were gathered through 13 focus group discussions. The number of members of these focus groups was between 4 and 12 people. The total number of participants in the focus groups was 91 medicinal plant exploiters. The results revealed that exploiters have a relatively favorable awareness of the current climate situation. However, they perceived huge constraints in financial supports and resources which lead to increasing social conflicts, decreasing social relations, leaving the job, increasing migration, unemployment, and psychological impacts. As expected, various adaptation strategies were used aiming at conserving, developing, improving, and managing income resources, but many of them are short of resilience orientation. Finally, research findings were articulated in the form of a conceptual model and some practical recommendations were presented to enhance adaptation of rangelands' exploiters.

Identifying strategies for adaptation of rural women to climate variability in water scarce areas

“…The lack of fodder caused by drought in the conditions of climatic changes has been compensated by using the strategy of buying fodder and animal feed. This finding is in line with the findings of Abedi et al (2022). Also, more than 31 % of the respondents used educational-extensional and consulting services in order to increase their knowledge and skills to adapt to climate variabilities.…”

“…The strategy of selling surplus livestock, selling valuable assets (such as gold) were other adaptation strategies to compensate for the deficit of household income in the conditions of climate change. These results are consistent with the results of Abedi et al (2022), Karimi et al (2022), andGoli et al (2023). More than 30 % of the respondents mentioned that reducing the quantity and quality of food is a solution to adapt to the harsh conditions of climate change (Table 7).…”

“…This strategy had the mean of 0.55 and a deviation of 0.49, and more than 55 % of the rural women studied in this research stated that they use this strategy (Table 8). Similar findings can be found among the results of Karimi et al (2022) and Abedi et al (2022). The category of social capital management strategies had the mean of 2.87, standard deviation of 1.69, minimum of 0, and a maximum of 7.…”

“…Various studies have been conducted on farmers' understanding and selection of adaptation strategies in different countries (see Tesfaye and Seifu, 2016;Karimi et al, 2020;Abedi et al, 2022;Valizadeh et al, 2022). However, most of them have addressed this issue at the macro level.…”