Assessing the effects of desertification control projects using socio-economic indicators in the arid regions of eastern
- PDF / 1,796,021 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 31 Downloads / 142 Views
Assessing the effects of desertification control projects using socio‑economic indicators in the arid regions of eastern Iran Rokhsareh Khashtabeh1 · Morteza Akbari1 · Mahdi Kolahi2 · Ali Talebanfard3 Received: 24 February 2020 / Accepted: 22 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Desertification control projects are implemented against the desertification process, but to reduce the environmental and socio-economic impacts of this threat, their effectiveness must be evaluated. This study aims to assess these projects in the east of Iran using socioeconomic criteria. Rates of migration, education, and participation and also factors of poverty, health, income and livelihood, investment, and employment are used to assess social and economic criteria, respectively. Forty-seven individuals were selected among local elders, facilitators, executive managers, and as well as experts and specialists at relevant organizations and agencies. Data were collected via questionnaires, deep interviews, and direct observation. Furthermore, the Delphi method was applied to rank and prioritize the indicators. The validity and reliability of the questionnaires were calculated according to the opinion of the expert community and also using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Data were analyzed in SPSS. The reliability of the questionnaire was 0.893 based on Cronbach’s alpha. The results of a one-sample t-test showed that the desertification control projects had moderate effectiveness and significantly improved employment and income indicators (p-value = 0.046), while the investment indicator had not changed significantly. According to the result of the Friedman test, the desertification control projects have had moderate effectiveness and have significantly improved the employment and income indicators. Although the investment indicator had not changed significantly, the rate of participation was highly increased, followed by education, migration, employment, health, and income. However, the projects were unable to reduce emigration. Such projects can be more effective if social, economic, and environmental indicators improved in parallel. Keyword Desertification mitigation · Climate change · Human activities · Local engagement
* Morteza Akbari [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Desert Area Management, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
2
Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Water and Environment Research Institute, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
3
Deputy of Natural Resources, Khorasan Razavi Department of Natural Resources and Watershed Management, Mashhad, Iran
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
R. Khashtabeh et al.
1 Introduction Desertification is a severe challenge in arid and semi-arid areas of the world (UNCCD 2018), causing major cultural, environmental, socio-economic, and political problems (Nkonya et al. 2011; Akbari et al. 2016; Akbari et al. 2020b, c). United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated that
Data Loading...
