Early action and the climate crisis: could social protection be a game changer?

Crises are increasingly multidimensional, severe and frequent, with many countries experiencing multiple overlapping crises, both recurrent and protracted, with climate change deepening and driving new and unexpected risks. A changing risk landscape, exacerbated by climate change and COVID-19, is setting us behind on poverty targets, and narrowing the window of opportunity for action. Now is the time to invest in social protection to ensure those most affected by climate change can strengthen their resilience capacity and avoid the worst impacts of disasters.

In order to achieve this, stakeholders must:

• embrace social protection as key to achieving climate policy objectives and enabling early action at scale.
• Invest in social protection systems strengthening and expand coverage.
• Strengthen coordination across sectors, actors, experts and agencies working on climate change, social protection, Disaster Risk Management, humanitarian and gender equality.
• Build operational linkages between social protection systems, disaster preparedness and early action.
• Exploit climate financing and link disaster financing to social protection systems and programmes.
• Support partnerships with civil society and local actors in early action and social protection.
• Ensure a focus on gender equality and social inclusion in efforts to build early action into social protection.
• Invest in data and data systems, including ensuring data is disaggregated.