Increasing people's resilience through social protection

This paper draws from existing evidence to highlight how social protection programmes and systems can contribute to building the anticipatory, adaptive and absorptive capacity of vulnerable people who are exposed to climate shocks and disasters.

As the increasing prevalence of climate-related extreme events exacerbates vulnerability and undermines efforts to reduce poverty, social protection is a key policy tool to help people manage a range of risks to their livelihoods and wellbeing, including climate shocks. Furthermore, social protection can build anticipatory capacity by linking social safety nets with mechanisms to prepare and plan for climate extremes and disasters. It provides beneficiaries with the capacity to absorb shocks and meet their basic needs in times of hardship.

Serveral factors contribute to ensuring programmes effectively reduce vulnerability to climate risks severaland are ‘adaptive’ or ‘shock-responsive’: 

• programmes should be designed to scalable and flexible,
• provided support aims to reduce current as well as future vulnerability,
• targeting, financing and coordination mechanisms should facilitate cross-sector responses to different types of risks.