Sustainable livelihood framework-based assessment of drought resilience patterns of rural households of Bakhtegan basin, Iran

Abstract

Todays, climate change, along with its impact on people’s livelihood, is considered as one of the most important challenges facing human societies. Regarded as one of the most important and costly climatic phenomena, drought has severely and catastrophically affected housholds’ livelihood through economic and social damages mostly in arid environment. Accordingly, drought management is deemed as one of the most important priorities policymakers in agriculture worldwide. The present study sought to determine and measure the household livelihood resilience in the Bakhtegan basin by means of a sustainable livelihood approach. To this end, the household livelihood resilience index was calculated using household capitals. The findings illustrated that household livelihood resilience index 0.359 on average, indicating the low level of resilience among households in the study area. Thereafter, taking data mining technique in determining resilience patterns, four different resilience patterns beginning from lower average resilience in all dimensions than that of other ones. However, the second-pattern households are more resilient. Eventually, this contribution would provide a number of implications to policymakers and other stakeholders in terms of improving planning and applying appropriate risk management strategies towards improving the resilience of farmers’ households in the event of a natural disasters, especially a drought..

Keywords

• Livelihood resilience
• Capitals
• Data mining
• Bakhtegan basin
• Iran