Toward sustainable adaptation to future climate change: insights from vulnerability and resilience approaches analyzing agrarian system of Iran

Author

Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi (seyyedmahmoodhashemi@gmail.com), Ali Bagheri and Nadine Marshall
Additional contact information

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2017, vol. 19, issue 1, pages 1-25

Abstract: Abstract There is no certainty that adaptation to climate change is sustainable, and new approaches to assess current climate change adaptation trajectories are sorely needed. In this paper, we review the farmer-focused approaches (typical of vulnerability approaches) and agro-ecosystem-focused approaches (typical of resilience approaches). We propose that a combination of the two may be a better way to conceptualize sustainable adaptation to future climate change within an agro-ecological system. To test our hypothesis, we use the case study of Iran, a land that has shown both tremendous resilience and vulnerability in its agro-ecological system. We explore the changes that have occurred in the Iranian farming system and their implications for farmers’ resilience to climate change through an integrated lens combining vulnerability approaches and resilience approaches. During the previous five decades, we describe how Iranian peasants have become small farmers, the land tenure system has changed from a traditional landlord-sharecropping system to family farms, and the quantity and quality of the agro-ecological resources have changed considerably. Our integrative approach provides important insights for both research and policy. We show that combining the two approaches can have far-reaching implications for farmers’ adaptation to future climate change knowledge, policy, and practice since one approach aims to decrease farmers vulnerability and the other approach aims to build resilient agro-ecosystems.

Keywords: Adaptation; Climate change; Development; Iran; Livelihood; Social–ecological systems; Sustainability; Systems thinking; Transformation; Water resources management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-015-9721-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link:http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:19:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10668-015-9721-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from  Springer
Series data maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com).

For further details log on website :
http://econpapers.repec.org/article/sprendesu/v_3a19_3ay_3a2017_3ai_3a1_3ad_3a10.1007_5fs10668-015-9721-3.htm