The effectiveness of livelihood management strategies in mitigating drought impacts and improving livability of pastoralist households

Abstract

Pastoralists' households have faced several external disruptions such as drought, climate change, and rangeland degradation. Climatic and anthropogenic stressors are projected to pose extra pressure on the rangelands and increase the vulnerability of pastoralist households. Effective interventions are needed to improve pastoralists' livelihoods under climatic and anthropogenic changes. The sustainable livelihood framework can help to identify and investigate livelihood profiles, strategies, and outcomes. This study aims to determine the economic and environmental effectiveness of livelihood management strategies in pastoralist communities of Fars province, Iran. Based on a survey of 393 Qashqai nomad households, who were selected through multi-stage cluster sampling, four different livelihood strategies were identified: the pastoral, agro-pastoral, servicing-pastoral and agro craft-pastoral. However, traditional pastoralism played a basic role in the livelihood of the pastoralist households. Further, the results indicated that the engagement of households in different livelihood strategies was significantly driven by their livelihood assets. The findings suggested that livelihood diversification can reduce household poverty, and maintain rangelands in a relatively better condition. However, given the differences in livelihood assets, no unique livelihood strategy can simultaneously provide both optimal economic advantages and ecological sustainability.