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Rural women's contribution to reacting to climate change is highly significant but has been largely marginalized due to gender roles. This gender discrimination makes them more vulnerable to a variety of threats. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the behaviour of female rice farmers in Mazandaran Province, in northern Iran, toward climate change adaptation using protection motivation theory (PMT). 173 female heads of households' rice farmers in Mazandaran Province were selected through stratified random sampling. According to the findings, the perceived vulnerability (β = 0.19), perceived severity (β = 0.33), self-efficacy (β = 0.4), and response effectiveness (β = 0.35) of female rice farmers have a positive and noticeable effect on responding behaviour to climate change. However, the response costs (β = −0.61) have a negative but noticeable effect on their adaptation behaviour toward changing climate. Research findings also show that climate change severely damages the physical capital of women paddy farmers. The damage caused by these climate crises has a greater impact on the production capacity, product quality, production costs and food security of female heads of households. The findings of this study will help define patterns determining the adaptation of women to climate change, and public and private sector's strategic planning and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural calamities such as drought, famine, and climate change have collided to create a humanitarian crisis. For the Horn of Africa (HoA), famine is among the factors that have caused the worst historical damages to the individual countries. Man-made calamities such as decentralized agricultural, pastoral activities and forest clearing are also root causes for the damage. Institutional arrangements (IAs) on land tenure systems and agricultural land conversion (ALC) as a part of this problem will be analyzed in this paper. Poor IAs on land are considered the main cause of insecure land tenure which diminishes the productivity of agriculture in this region, and this, specifically in times of drought, exacerbates famine. Accordingly, the paper explores the idea that to what extent poor IAs on land tenure systems can explain the famine in the HoA. IAs on land comprise two main functions: land quality management and regulation and standard-setting for land utilization. The types of IAs for land often differ. The "optimal" arrangement depends on political, economic, social, climatic, geographical, and technical factors that together form a complex system of IAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]