Management of effective factors in increasing the resilience of rural settlements against drought a case study of Ilam province

Abstract

Drought is considered a potential natural disaster and threat. Despite all the scientific and technical advancements, in developing countries the management of this hazard is still complicated. Drought management is an important step toward reducing its adverse impacts. The main purpose of the research is to investigate the relationship between community capital and resilience against drought in selected villages in Ilam province, in south west of Iran. The research is applied in terms of purpose and is implemented quantitatively. The data have been collected using the library and field methods (questionnaire). Chalab (Mehran), Jihadabad (Dare-Shahr), Goluzeh (Dehlran) villages have been selected as sample rural settlement communities from the four geographical directions which had severe droughts in Ilam province. Using Cochran's formula, the sample size of the studied villages was 283 people, which reached 285 people after applying proportionality to the quorum of the questionnaire. In order to check the state of community funds before and after the measures were taken, the paired T-test was used, which showed the significance of the differences. The findings showed that the physical, human, financial and natural capitals are the most important factors in improving resilience; and social, political and cultural capitals have the least effect in the selected villages. It seems that executive programs in line with drought management in Ilam province show more tendencies toward top-down approach, the first result of which is the low rate of people's participation and less attention to the engagement of people's capacity for better management.