Ministry of Agriculture Jihad Experts' Assessment of Sustainability of Agricultural Adaptation Policies to Climate Change

The purpose of this study is to investigate the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of sustainability of adaptation policies with regard to sustainability indicators. In terms of methodological process, this study was conducted in two consecutive stages. The first stage of this research involves identification and extraction a list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to climate change adaptation policies in agriculture based on a qualitative research paradigm and utilizing focused group techniques and interview with 17 experts from Ministery of Agriculture Jihad. In the second stage of the research, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was conducted to compare pairs of criteria and sub-criteria with respect to the main goal of sustainability of policies as well as pair-wise comparison of each set of alternatives into four classes of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Data were analyzed by Expert Choice software. After determining the weight of each criterion and sub-criterion, the alternative priorities were identified as four components of strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. The results showed that environmental, economic and social criteria were the most important to achieve sustainability of policies, respectively. Also in environmental criteria, “non-emission of greenhouse gas”, in economic criteria, “helping to diversify farmers' income” and in social criteria, “attention to social participation” were identified as the most important sub-criteria.