Climate disasters hit poor people hardest. There’s an obvious solution to that.
New experiments show the power of giving cash right before extreme weather strikes.
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For many people — especially poorer people in poorer countries — the problem is now. Climate change is already flooding their homes and causing them heatstroke. It would be unjust for richer countries that disproportionately created the problem to say “we get to determine the time scale of the problem, not you, and we’re deciding to frame the problem as a future event to be mitigated.” Climate change is also a present event, so solving it also means addressing the problem as it exists today.
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One approach to adaptation is to direct funding to governments so they can build up the infrastructure — whether that’s a seawall or a new irrigation system — to reduce the impacts of shocks. These big public goods are definitely important, and they should get a larger share of climate financing than they do today. But implementing major projects like these can take time. If you’re, say, a smallholder farmer whose food and income source is about to be wiped away by a climate change-enhanced cyclone, you don’t have that time.
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In July 2020, data-driven forecasts of river levels in Bangladesh showed that many households were about to experience severe flooding. The World Food Programme sent 23,434 households around $53 each a few days prior to and during the floods.
The preemptive action turned out to be a great bet. Those floods ended up being some of the worst and longest in decades: Over a million households were inundated, and food markets and health services were disrupted.
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The results so far are promising. More farmers are using better seeds (which are drought- and flood-resistant), more are intercropping (which improves fertility), and fewer are going hungry (specifically, there was about a 60 percent drop in the proportion of recipients who went a whole day without eating).
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