Uncovering the reasons behind the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies

Climate change has caused pastoralists to face serious challenges all around the world. To reduce climate change vulnerability, adaptation strategies need to be adopted by pastoralists. In this regard, the present research was done to seek the reasons for the failure of the northeastern pastoralists of Iran in adopting climate change adaptation strategies. The study is descriptive, which conducted by a field survey. The target population included 249 pastoralists from 7 pastoral units, of whom 148 people were selected as sample size using the stratified random sampling technique. The survey instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire. The content validity and face validity of the questionnaire were checked by the experts. Convergent validity was also confirmed based on the average variance extracted (AVE). Cronbach’s α coefficient and composite reliability (CR) were used to evaluate the internal consistency of the questionnaire. The results showed that social and, regulatory and insurance components were the most critical internal and external weaknesses of the pastoralists’ failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies, respectively. Structural equation modeling showed that external weaknesses had positive and significant effects on internal weaknesses of the pastoralists’ failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.


Study area
Qarah Dang rangelands were selected as study area (37°36ʹ23ʺN-54°49ʹ41ʺE to 37°44ʹ36ʺN-55°11ʹ39ʺE).These rangelands are a part of the Atrak river basin in Golestan province, Iran (Fig. 1).Qarah Dang rangelands cover an area about 228.9 km 2 .The area is relatively flat.The average annual rainfall is 249.6 mm.The area climate is semi-arid according to the modified De Martonne classification, indicating the low potential for providing water resources.The average annual potential evaporation is estimated to be 3 times greater than the annual rainfall.The main river of the region run dry for most of the year and river bed was plowed and converted into rainfed croplands by some pastoralists.
There are 116 plant species from 32 families in the study area.Poaceae and Asteraceae are the most abundant families.Climatic limitations (low precipitation, its uneven distribution, and drought), an extending grazing season in the rangeland, and rangeland to cropland conversion have severely affected the vegetation, so that most of the perennial palatable species have disappeared and invasive and poisonous species dominated.In some parts, soil is left bare where vegetation cover is absent or almost absent.Therefore, a special situation has arisen in the region, increasing the proportion of annual species in vegetation composition.
All the pastoralists in the region are Turkmen, occupied by animal husbandry and agriculture.The rangelands are annually grazed by herds from the end of November to the end of March (4 months based on their grazing permit).However, livestock grazing may be extended to the end of April due to the lack of rangeland forage.

Data collection
This study is a survey research, quantitative in terms of the nature and applied in terms of the objective.The statistical population includes 249 Turkmen pastoralists belonging to seven pastoral units, of which 148 pastoralists were selected as the sample size based on Krejcie and Morgan Table (Table 1).The pastoralists were selected using stratified sampling scheme.So, samples were divided among the seven pastoral units.The number of samples was allocated based on the population of each pastoral unit.
The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire.The initial items were listed based on the research objectives and literature review.To modify and localize the initial items, 10 individual interviews were conducted with the organizational experts (General Department of Natural Resources and Watershed Management of www.nature.com/scientificreports/Golestan Province) and experienced pastoralists.The interviewees were selected by snowball method.In this stage, 82 items were listed.After removing duplicate and irrelevant items, 49 items were finalized.
The content validity and face validity of the questionnaire were checked by the experts.Convergent validity was also confirmed based on the average variance extracted (AVE).Cornbrash's α coefficient and combined reliability (CR) were calculated to evaluate the internal consistency of the questionnaire (Table 2).
The first part of the questionnaire was related to the personal characteristics of the respondents, which was investigated using 16 items (Table 3), of which nine and seven items were respectively related to personal and economic characteristics of the respondents.
The second part of the questionnaire was related to internal and external weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Internal weaknesses included 6 components (economic, knowledge-based, communication, ecological, social, and psychological components), which were evaluated through 18 items (Table 4).External weaknesses included infrastructural (5 items), supportive (5 items), regulatory and insurance (2 items), and market (4 items) components.In total, external weaknesses were evaluated through 16 items (Table 5).

Data analyses
Descriptive and inferential statistics were done in IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0.In the descriptive statistics, frequency, frequency percentage, mean, minimum and maximum of the respondents' personal characteristics were computed.The interval of standard deviation from the mean (ISDM) was calculated to classify the effect of internal and external weaknesses on the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Based on the sum of the values, components were classified into four classes: Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationships between the internal and external weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies and their personal characteristics.Mann-Whitney test was used to compare pastoralists in terms of response to climate change adaption strategies in dichotomous groups.In order to compare the internal and external weaknesses of the  This method is a special causal structure between a set of latent variables and observable variables.Using the structural equation modeling, the relationships between the latent variables and the relationships between measurement items of each latent variable and the related variable were investigated.
The path coefficient was used to show the e causal relationship between the latent and observable variables.The strength of the relationship between the latent and observable variables is represented by the factor loading.Factor loading ranges between 0 and 1.If the factor loading is less than 0.3, the relationship is considered weak and it is ignored.A factor loading between 0.3 and 0.6 is acceptable, and if it is greater than 0.6, it is very desirable.SmartPLS 3 software was used to perform the calculations of this method.

Ethics approval and consent to participate
All experimental protocols were approved by Review Board of Department of Ecological Engineering, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Jiroft, Iran.All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Personal characteristics of pastoralists
The main personal characteristics of the respondents are summarized in Table 3.The average age of the respondents was 50.2 years, ranging between 26 and 82 year.88.5 percent of the respondents were married and the rest were single.The mean family size was 5, ranging between 2 and12.44.6 percent of pastoralists had involved 3 family members in animal husbandry (the highest frequency).Also, 41.9 percent of the respondents were illiterate who did not have the ability to read and write.The pastoralists had averagely 200 heads of livestock, ranging Six items including "increasing animal husbandry costs and disproportion between costs and incomes", "low level of knowledge and awareness", "low access to media and virtual communication channels", "decrease in the rangeland forage quality and diversity", "increasing conflict due to communal exploitation" and "lack of risktaking to implement climate change adaptation strategies" with the highest average values were the first item of each component for the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Based on internal items comparison, "low level of knowledge and awareness" from the knowledge-based component with an average of 3.615, "increasing conflict due to communal exploitation" from the social component with an average of 3.588 and "decrease in the rangeland forage quality and diversity" from the ecological component with an average of 3.568 were the first three limitations of the pastoralists' adaptation to climate change (Table 4).
Concerning the external weaknesses of the pastoralists' adaptation to climate change, "lack of planning for rainwater harvesting" from the infrastructure component, "lack of conditions to create complementary jobs in the region" from the supportive component, "lack of transparency of insurance services for livestock and rangeland and not covering damages when claiming on the insurance" from the regulatory and insurance component and "uneconomical herding due to extreme price fluctuations" from the market component with the highest mean values were the most important external weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Also, the three items "uneconomical herding due to extreme price fluctuations" and "inflation and market fluctuations in buying inputs and selling livestock products" from the market component and "lack of transparency of insurance services for livestock and rangeland and not covering damages when claiming on the insurance" from the regulatory and insurance component were the most important external weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies (Table 5).
The comparison of internal and external components showed that the pastoralists are faced to internal (social (3.505) and ecological (3.455)) and external (market (3.552) and regulatory and insurance (3.544)) weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Psychological and economic components from internal weaknesses and supporting and infrastructural components from external weaknesses had the least importance for the pastoralists' adaptation to climate change (Table 6).
Meanwhile, 39.9% and 40.5% of the respondents had high internal and external weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies, respectively (Table 7).

The relationship between personal characteristics of pastoralists and their response to climate change adaption strategies
The number of livestock had a positive and significant relationship with the pastoralists' response to climate change adaption strategies.The more the number of livestock, the more their weaknesses in response to climate change adaption strategies.The number of family members involved in animal husbandry, years of experience in animal husbandry, the amount of income from animal husbandry, the amount of income from non-animal husbandry jobs, the level of understanding of climate change, the amount of experience in facing climate change in the rangeland, age, literacy level, and the level of knowledge and awareness of climate change had negative and significant relationships with the pastoralists response to climate change adaption strategies.In other words, by increasing each of these variables, the pastoralists' weaknesses in response to climate change adaption strategies had been increased (Table 8).
Based on Table 9, pastoralists were different in terms of response to climate change adaption strategies, depending on having jobs other than animal husbandry, participating in educational and extension courses, and having agricultural equipment and tools.In other words, pastoralists who had jobs other than animal husbandry, had participated in educational and extension courses related to climate change, and also had agricultural equipment and tools (especially tractors and water tankers).They had more adaptive capacity to climate change (Table 9).www.nature.com/scientificreports/

Modeling the effect of external weaknesses on internal weaknesses
The results of the modeling the effect of external weaknesses and internal weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies are shown in Table 10.External weaknesses had a positive and significant effect on the internal weaknesses.In this regard, the supportive component with a coefficient of 0.932 (external dimension) and the communication component with a coefficient of 0.921 (internal dimension) were the most important weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies (Fig. 2).Most of the pastoralists had experienced high to moderate internal weaknesses.This finding shows that the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies is mainly related to the weaknesses associated with the nomadic life in rangelands.These weaknesses are part of a triangular framework (livestock, pastoralist, and rangeland).In other words, the level of pastoralists' knowledge, their communication and social interactions, their cooperation and solidarity, livestock, fodder and water management, and also their financial status can play an essential role in reducing the internal weaknesses of their failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies 39 .
The social component was considered the most critical internal weakness of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Shared use of rangelands increased disputes and conflicts between the pastoralists because of the demand of some pastoralists for more shares of rangeland.This finding is consistent with the results of other studies 34,37 .The lack of border restrictions in livestock grazing management has caused pastoralists to compete in the rangeland exploitation even in droughts.So the competition in the rangeland exploitation, land and vegetation degradation, and reduction in the quantity and quality of fodder have doubled pastoralists' vulnerability to climate change.On the other hand, the conflicts between pastoralists in common use of rangelands resulted in the reduction of intragroup (between pastoralists) and intergroup (between pastoralists and experts) trust, which has weakened their participation in rangeland restoration activities.This made pastoralists not to pay much attention to the recommendations of extension specialists to adopt climate change adaptation strategies.As the conflicts increase and the social trust decreases, a suitable response will not be received in adopting climate change adaptation strategies due to the lack of participation and responsibility in rangeland restoration activities.This led to competition among the pastoralists for more exploitation of the rangeland in critical conditions, resulting in ecological and environmental challenges.The decrease in precipitation, its uneven distribution in the region, changes in the rainfall regimes, and extreme temperature fluctuations have caused drought in the area.Considering the livelihood dependence of the pastoralists on vegetation and fodder in the rangeland, the reduction of rangeland forage has forced them to buy supplementary feed, creating limitations to adapt to climate change.On the other hand, the issues related to quantity and quality of drinking water are other reasons of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Such issues Table 10.The effect of external weaknesses on internal weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.

Relation Path coefficient t Sig Result
External weaknesses → Internal weaknesses 0.766 24.028 0.000 Approved www.nature.com/scientificreports/can be solved by buying and transporting bulk water volumes in trucks to pastoral units, imposing impose extra costs on the pastoralists.Communication and knowledge weaknesses were the other factors limiting pastoralists' response to climate change adaptation strategies.The environmental knowledge and education are of the significant determinants of adaptive capacity of pastoralists to climate change 48,49 .The low literacy levels amongst the pastoralists limit the number of selected adaptation strategies in the face of climate change.So, illiteracy or low literacy level limits the pastoralists' access to communication channels, especially the information provided on the Internet.Nonfamiliarity with climate change adaptation strategies and not taking advantage of successful experiences offered by the different areas cause problems in the pastoralists' adaptation to climatic fluctuations.Therefore, planning targeted trainings, conducting face-to-face training courses, and visiting successful regions can be effective in improving the adaptive capacity of pastoralists to climate change.

External weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies
The results showed that more than two-fifths of the pastoralists failed in adopting climate change adaptation strategies due to external weaknesses.In addition to intergroup weaknesses, there were intragroup weaknesses (outside the rangeland) limiting pastoralists' response to climate change adaptation strategies, such as management, policy-making, and supportive infrastructures.The intragroup weaknesses had a positive effect on the internal weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.The findings of structural equation modeling also confirmed the positive effect of external weaknesses on internal weaknesses.
Market was the most important component of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Climate change has reduced forage quantity and quality and water resources in the study area rangelands.These conditions made pastoralists to buy supplementary fodder and drinking water for livestock, increasing the cost of herding in rangelands.Therefore, pastoralists sell part of their livestock in local markets to meet the family's livelihood expenses.As a result, the herds become progressively smaller, which is not economical for the pastoralists.The high cost-to-income ratio, intermediation, and price volatility of live livestock in the markets have limited the adaptive capacity of pastoralists to climate change.On the other hand, the sharp increase of fodder price in the market and its disproportion with live-livestock price have reduced income and saving performance of pastoralists.Therefore, most pastoralists are forced to buy fodder for a high price, doubling their adaptation problems.Owning agricultural land plays an important role in the adaptation of pastoralists to climate change 42,57,59 .The high inflation rate, input prices fluctuation, and the lack of easy access to local and regional markets have reduced pastoralists' ability to succeed in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.Therefore, access to markets for the sale of animal products plays an important role in facilitating the adaptation process of pastoralists in the face of climate change [40][41][42][43] .
As the results showed, regulatory and insurance component was one of the important factors of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.The lack of transparency of insurance services for livestock and rangeland and not covering damages when claiming on the insurance can be of the most important reasons for this finding.Considering the close and undeniable relationship between climatic factors and forage production in rangelands, insurance services for livestock and rangeland can reduce part of pastoralists' worries about their vulnerability to the effects of droughts 60,61 .Rangeland insurance in Iran faces challenges, such as inefficiency, weakness in damage assessment, and damages payment, causing most of the pastoralists to not have incentives for insurance services for livestock and rangeland, despite knowing about their vulnerability to climate change and its risks 62 .Therefore, accurate estimation of rangeland production in different climatic conditions can provide a basis for the development of the insurance industry, insurance pricing, and payment of damages.So, the criterion for payment of damages will be the average forage production of rangelands and its deviation from the effective rainfall index.In such conditions, a more suitable opportunity is provided for the organizations responsible for rangeland management in the climate crises to provide the necessary support for the development of the insurance industry in the livestock and rangeland sector.Therefore, it is necessary to prepare and formulate clear guidelines for livestock and rangeland insurance, so that rangeland or livestock damage will be paid for a claim in times of crisis.
The findings showed that the economic services and supports of the government had a significant effect on pastoralists' vulnerability to climate change.This finding is in agreement with the results of other studies 39 .Therefore, the government's lack of support for the pastoralists has a double importance in their low adaptive capacity to climate change 15,48,49 .Bad income status of pastoralists due to livelihood dependence on rangelands is the reason why they do not adopt well climate change adaptation strategies.The government can create alternative or complementary jobs for pastoralists to earn more money.In this regard, the appropriate allocation of government credits in the activities related to climate change in the rangeland sector plays an important role in the adaptation of the pastoralists.On the other hand, a lack of proper oversight of providing fodder to pastoralists in the climate crisis is one of the factors of their failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.The government is responsible for providing free fodder and medical and veterinary services to pastoralists which would require a subsidy 42,43,50,51,54 .In addition, the government can reduce the vulnerability of the water sector to climate change through providing water infrastructures (such as water pools and rainwater harvesting systems).

The relationship between pastoralists' personal characteristics and their weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies
The findings showed that with increasing age, the pastoralists' weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies decreased.This finding is consistent with the results of other studies 21,50 .As age increases, pastoralists show more adaptive capacity in the face of climate change due to the indigenous knowledge acquired in different dimensions.In other words, taking advantage of indigenous knowledge may help pastoralists in adopting adaptation strategies and reducing their vulnerability to climate change 46,47,63 .Therefore, pastoralists have gained different experiences in facing the risks of climate change, especially drought, through various trials and errors, reducing their weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies 15 .Also, pastoralists who have a lot of experience in the face of climate change, have a higher understanding of adaptation strategies and natural hazards 39,50 .
The results showed that literate pastoralists had more adaptive capacity to climate change 22,41,53,54 .Less limitations of educated pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies compared to illiterate or less literate ones can be related to the ability of using education especially on cyberspace, and increasing knowledge and awareness in the use of various ways of adapting to climate change.Meanwhile, knowing the right time to use climate change adaptation strategies and timely response to natural hazards are the basis for reducing the weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies 3,44,52 .As the level of knowledge and access to climate information increase, pastoralists show a more principled attitude towards the resulting effects of climate change 21,50,55 .The high level of knowledge in the face of climate change will increase the rate of adaptation 3,38 .This requires providing targeted training to pastoralists and gaining their field experiences in the face of natural hazards 48,49 .Therefore, access to educational and extension services reduces pastoralists' vulnerability to climate change 15,50,54 .
The pastoralists with more number of livestock had had less adaptive capacity to climate change than small pastoralists.Although a greater number of livestock can be a good source of income and savings in ideal climatic conditions, it faces pastoralists with serious challenges in environmental and climate crisis 15,21,53,54,57 .
The results showed that as income increases (from animal husbandry and non-animal husbandry), the pastoralists' weaknesses in adopting climate change adaptation strategies decrease 15,21,41,53 .Therefore, strong financial and livelihood conditions plays an important role in pastoralists' adaptation to climate change 48,49 .Having a secondary job will increase the amount of income and can help create employment for other family members 40,41 .Although, the lack of active labor is one of the challenges of the pastoralism [40][41][42] , it reduces the risks resulting from income and livelihood dependence on rangelands, which is a good way to adapt to climate change.Pastoralists owning agricultural equipment and tools (such as tractors) were more successful in overcoming some of the limitations of climatic fluctuations, especially water supply.This finding is consistent with the results of other studies 54 .

Conclusion
Pastoralists' livelihood is directly related to climatic variables in the rangeland.Climate change and its consequences such as droughts threaten pastoralism and have had negative impact on all dimensions of pastoralists' livelihood.The low adaptive capacity of pastoralists in the face of climate change will worsen their livelihood status.Adopting climate change adaptation strategies can play an important role in the continuation of pastoralism and improving the sustainable livelihood of pastoralists.Therefore, it is of enormous importance to know the weaknesses of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.The adaptation of pastoralists in the face of climate change depends on external and internal weaknesses.Social and regulatory and insurance components were the most important internal and external weaknesses of the pastoralists' failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies, respectively.The external weaknesses played an important role in reducing the internal ones in the traditional pastoralism systems.Therefore, the adoption of new income activities other than animal husbandry and adjusting insurance services to match the pastoralists' needs in the rangeland will increase pastoralists' adaptive capacity in response to climate change.Determining the pastoralists' livelihood capitals and their vulnerability to climate change could be ideas for future studies to improve adoption of climate change adaptation strategies by pastoralists.

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. The effect of external weaknesses on internal weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.

Table 1 .
The number of samples allocated to different pastoral units.

Table 2 .
The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the components.

Table 3 .
Personal characteristics of the pastoralists in the region.

Table 4 .
Comparison of the internal weaknesses of the pastoralists' adaptation to climate change.Range of answers: (1: very little; 2: little; 3: to some extent; 4: a lot; 5: very much.

Table 5 .
Comparison of the internal weaknesses of the pastoralists' adaptation to climate change.

Table 6 .
Comparison of internal and external weaknesses of the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.

Table 7 .
The extent of internal and external weaknesses for the failure of pastoralists in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.

Table 8 .
Correlation between personal characteristics of pastoralists and their response to climate change adaption strategies.*Significant at the 95%; **Significant at the 99%.

Table 9 .
Comparison of pastoralists in terms of response to climate change adaption strategies in dichotomous groups using Mann-Whitney U test.*Significant at the 95%; **Significant at the 99%.