The Effect of Livelihood Strategies and Capitals on Natural Rangelands and Household Poverty in Fars Province of Iran

Revenues from traditional ranching activity have declined in recent years. In addition, overgrazing on natural rangelands are known to be one of the main reasons of adverse environmental conditions. Some researchers believe that households will be able to achieve sustainable livelihoods by selecting the correct livelihood strategy and using capitals properly. In this regard, this study was conducted to investigate the impact of livelihood strategies and capitals on rangeland sustainability and reducing household poverty in the northern rangelands of Fars province in Iran. For this purpose, since nomads are the main users of rangelands, a sample of 393 nomadic households was selected to collect the required data. Also, to deal with the unknown heterogeneity, the environmental consequences and poverty of the livelihood strategies adopted by the households were examined in the counterfactual analysis framework using multinomial endogenous switching regression. The study results showed that if should the nomads select the strategy based on diversity of activities, the household poverty index would decrease by five percent and the rangeland sustainability index would increase by four percent. Therefore, by adopting a strategy based on diversity of activities, it is possible to simultaneously reduce household poverty and increase rangeland sustainability.