Building resilience to climate risks through social protection: from individualised models to systemic transformation

Abstract

This article analyses the role of social protection programmes in contributing to people's resilience to climate risks. Drawing from desk‐based and empirical studies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, it finds that social transfers make a strong contribution to the capacity of individuals and households to absorb the negative impacts of climate‐related shocks and stresses. They do so through the provision of reliable, national social safety net systems—even when these are not specifically designed to address climate risks. Social protection can also increase the anticipatory capacity of national disaster response systems through scalability mechanisms, or pre‐emptively through linkages to early action and early warning mechanisms. Critical knowledge gaps remain in terms of programmes’ contributions to the adaptive capacity required for long‐term resilience. The findings offer insights beyond social protection on the importance of robust, national administrative systems as a key foundation to support people's resilience to climate risks.

Building resilience from the ground up

“…Ulrichs et al (2019) observe that applying 'resilience thinking' to social protection requires consideration of issues that do not normally receive much attention in this field of development practice. As a result, a transformative approach is needed to address underlying structural inequalities, discriminatory practices and gender norms, including those that result in gender-based violence.…”

“…Pragmatically, they explain that this is effective because information is conveyed by a man, in the local language and based on the law and on religious texts. Ulrichs et al (2019) observe that the emphasis from within social protection is largely on programmes that specifically aim to address climate risks by either (1) scaling up in response to a short-term shock episode or (2) incorporating more complex elements beyond the transfer, such as asset-building through public works or savings and loans to enable households to build assets and transform livelihoods (described as 'social protection plus', or productive safety net programmes). The article recommends creating awareness and working gently through other programmes that people are interested in until they are ready to address the problem more directly.…”

“…As a result, a transformative approach is needed to address underlying structural inequalities, discriminatory practices and gender norms, including those that result in gender-based violence. Ulrichs et al (2019) observe that applying 'resilience thinking' to social protection requires consideration of issues that do not normally receive much attention in this field of development practice. It pushes those designing social protection programmes to look beyond helping people so they can absorb shocks, towards a more anticipatory approach.…”

“…Social protection programmes are undergoing changes to help beneficiaries anticipate immediate shocks and absorb some of their impacts, and are beginning to explore opportunities to help people to adapt. If resilience-building entails strengthening the '3As' of adaptive, absorptive and anticipatory capacity, as described by Bahadur et al (2015), then, according to Ulrichs et al (2019), shock-responsive social protection programmes are less suitable for strengthening adaptive capacity. However, they note that, nonetheless, social protection programmes could work well in communities able to drive their own adaptation agendas.…”

“…Each brings a different perspective on the significance and operationalisation of efforts to build resilience to climate extremes and disasters. The contributing authors describe resilience-building at different scales, for different types of projects and interventions: from gender-differentiated perspectives within households in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Chad (Le Masson et al, 2019;McOmber et al, 2019), to devolved community planning and financing in Mali and Senegal (Beauchamp et al, 2019); from sector-wide agricultural extension support in Sudan (Young and Ismail, 2019), to early warning systems in Ethiopia and Nicaragua (Ewbank et al, 2019), national social protection programmes in Ethiopia (Ulrichs et al, 2019) and advocacy for mainstreaming into government policy in South Asia (Tanner et al, 2019).…”