Social protection as a strategy to address climate-induced migration

Schwan, Susanne; Yu, Xiaohua

doi:10.1108/ijccsm-01-2017-0019

Cited by 39 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Well-designed PPSN programs have proven potential to reduce costly household coping strategies [75,76] and migration [77] in the face of climate shocks; and stimulate agricultural production by alleviating capital constraints [75,[78][79][80][81]. Motivated in part by climate change, adaptive social protection extends social safety nets to promote improved livelihoods through, e.g., credit, production inputs, agricultural extension, and risk finance [82][83][84][85]; and introduces financial mechanisms to increase the responsiveness of PSSN programs to climate shocks [83,[86][87][88].…”

Section: Productive Social Safety Nets (Pssn)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Food and Earth Systems: Priorities for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Agriculture and Food Systems

et al. 2019

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Human activities and their relation with land, through agriculture and forestry, are significantly impacting Earth system functioning. Specifically, agriculture has increasingly become a key sector for adaptation and mitigation initiatives that address climate change and help ensure food security for a growing global population. Climate change and agricultural outcomes influence our ability to reach targets for at least seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. By 2015, 103 nations had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, while 102 countries had prioritized agriculture in their adaptation agenda. Adaptation and mitigation actions within agriculture still receive insufficient support across scales, from local to international level. This paper reviews a series of climate change adaptation and mitigation options that can support increased production, production efficiency and greater food security for 9 billion people by 2050. Climate-smart agriculture can help foster synergies between productivity, adaptation, and mitigation, although trade-offs may be equally apparent. This study highlights the importance of identifying and exploiting those synergies in the context of Nationally Determined Contributions. Finally, the paper points out that keeping global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 requires going beyond the agriculture sector and exploring possibilities with respect to reduced emissions from deforestation, food loss, and waste, as well as from rethinking human diets.

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Section: Productive Social Safety Nets (Pssn)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Food and Earth Systems: Priorities for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Agriculture and Food Systems

et al. 2019

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“…Social protection likewise enhances the absorptive and adaptive capacities of households confronted with climate‐related migration. Protective instruments such as cash and asset transfers and public workfare are vital immediate‐term safety nets for households at risk of forced displacement or distress migration (i.e., a maladaptive coping strategy) following rapid‐onset climate impacts (Johnson & Krishnamurthy, ; Schwan & Yu, ). But with additional preventive and promotive objectives, social protection can also facilitate voluntary resettlement as a forward‐looking and long‐term adaptation strategy, by subsidizing transaction costs of economic migration as well as helping recipients to (re)build their livelihoods and social networks once resettled (Johnson & Krishnamurthy, ; Schwan & Yu, ).…”

Section: Is Social Protection Already Contributing To Climate Change mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Protective instruments such as cash and asset transfers and public workfare are vital immediate‐term safety nets for households at risk of forced displacement or distress migration (i.e., a maladaptive coping strategy) following rapid‐onset climate impacts (Johnson & Krishnamurthy, ; Schwan & Yu, ). But with additional preventive and promotive objectives, social protection can also facilitate voluntary resettlement as a forward‐looking and long‐term adaptation strategy, by subsidizing transaction costs of economic migration as well as helping recipients to (re)build their livelihoods and social networks once resettled (Johnson & Krishnamurthy, ; Schwan & Yu, ). Public employment schemes moreover support recovery and reconstruction in the aftermath of disasters, and the creation of resilient infrastructure and other public assets that can reduce the impact of future shocks (Godfrey‐Wood & Flower, ; Schwan & Yu, ).…”

Section: Is Social Protection Already Contributing To Climate Change mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But with additional preventive and promotive objectives, social protection can also facilitate voluntary resettlement as a forward‐looking and long‐term adaptation strategy, by subsidizing transaction costs of economic migration as well as helping recipients to (re)build their livelihoods and social networks once resettled (Johnson & Krishnamurthy, ; Schwan & Yu, ). Public employment schemes moreover support recovery and reconstruction in the aftermath of disasters, and the creation of resilient infrastructure and other public assets that can reduce the impact of future shocks (Godfrey‐Wood & Flower, ; Schwan & Yu, ). However, ensuring that interventions effectively target the households which face the economic, social and legal barriers preventing them from considering migration as an adaptation strategy is a major challenge (Johnson & Krishnamurthy, ).…”

Section: Is Social Protection Already Contributing To Climate Change mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating social protection and climate change adaptation: A review

Tenzing

2019

WIREs Climate Change

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Policymakers are increasingly interested in how social protection is evolving in the context of climate change. This review assesses what the literature tells us about its role in facilitating adaptation in lower income countries. It also explores how far thinking on an integrated "adaptive social protection" (ASP) agenda considers transforming the socioeconomic and political contexts where vulnerability to climate change originates.The review finds that research to date focuses on how instruments such as cash or asset transfers can protect the poor from shocks and stresses, prevent households from falling into poverty as a result of climate change, and promote climate-resilient livelihoods.However, it cautions that such interventions must go beyond helping households to cope against shocks over short time horizons; they should enable the adoption of forward-looking strategies for long-lasting adaptation. Much less attention in the literature is given to whether social protection measures might have transformational effects for recipients. This is despite the fact that the earliest proponents of ASP favored a rights-based approach to social protection to address issues of inequality and marginalization which are at the root of poverty and vulnerability to climate change. Although

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“…Therefore, there is an urgent need for policy communities to find instruments that effectively address the multiple dimensions of planetary crises at scale. This Opinion piece highlights the potential of social assistance instruments to enhance global efforts for environmental action [3,4]. It also identifies the need for better evidence on their potential, and suggests specific actions that can help realize this potential.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing employment-based social assistance programmes to scale up nature-based climate action

Norton

Seddon

Agrawal

et al. 2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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As the severity of the triple challenges of global inequality, climate change and biodiversity loss becomes clearer, governments and international development institutions must find effective policy instruments to respond. We examine the potential of social assistance policies in this context. Social assistance refers to transfers to poor, vulnerable and marginalized groups to reduce their vulnerability and livelihood risks, and to enhance their rights and status. Substantial public funds support social assistance programmes globally. Collectively, lower- and middle-income countries spend approximately 1.5% of their GDP on social assistance annually. We focus on the potential of paid employment schemes to promote effective ecosystem stewardship. Available evidence suggests such programmes can offer multiple benefits in terms of improvements in local ecosystems and natural capital, carbon sequestration and local biodiversity conservation. We review evidence from three key case studies: in India (the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), Ethiopia (the Productive Safety Nets Programme) and Mexico (the Temporary Employment Programme). We conclude that, to realize the potential of employment-based social assistance for ecosystem benefits it will be necessary to address two challenges: first, the weak design and maintenance of local public works outputs in many schemes, and second, the concern that social protection schemes may become less effective if they are overburdened with additional objectives. Overcoming these challenges requires an evolution of institutional systems for delivering social assistance to enable a more effective combination of social and environmental objectives. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions’.

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Social protection as a strategy to address climate-induced migration

Cited by 39 publications

References 66 publications

Food and Earth Systems: Priorities for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Agriculture and Food Systems

Food and Earth Systems: Priorities for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Agriculture and Food Systems

Integrating social protection and climate change adaptation: A review

Harnessing employment-based social assistance programmes to scale up nature-based climate action

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