How can synergies between social protection and climate change adaptation be identified and developed? Social protection initiatives are unlikely to succeed in reducing poverty if they do not consider both the short- and long-term shocks and stresses associated with climate change. Researchers at the Institute of Development Studies have therefore developed an ‘adaptive social protection’ framework. This helps to identify opportunities for social protection to enhance adaptation, and for social protection programmes to be made more climate-resilient.
Social protection and climate change adaptation both seek to protect the most vulnerable people and promote resilience. Yet greater connections between them are needed. Social protection needs to pay more attention to the long-term risks posed by climate change. Likewise, adaptation has not fully considered the policy and programmatic options that social protection can provide.
Case studies show that the use of social protection instruments can enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities to the effects of climate change. They indicate ways in which social protection measures could better integrate climate change adaptation, such as:
- Weather-indexed crop insurance: Insuring directly against bad weather instead of against poor crop yields means that, when affected by bad weather, farmers still have an incentive to make productive management decisions. Weather-indexed insurance may also permit farmers to enhance adaptive capacity through greater agricultural experimentation.
- Seed fairs: Seed voucher and fair projects present a cost-effective way to assist post-disaster recovery and enhance resilience by promoting crop diversity and information sharing between farmers. Farmers and traders are encouraged to bring surplus seeds to locally organised fairs, where recipients of seed vouchers select seeds of their choice. Seed retailers then redeem their vouchers for cash.
- Asset transfers: Social protection measures can contribute to asset accumulation, for example through the provision of livestock or poultry through asset transfer programmes. The uptake of assets which would enhance income and be resilient to climate change could be encouraged.
- Cash transfers: Predictable cash transfers could reduce the vulnerability of the chronically poor exposed to climate-related shocks and stresses and prevent the use of damaging coping strategies.
Adaptive social protection involves a long-term perspective that considers the changing nature of climate-related shocks and stresses. Other features of adaptive social protection include:
- An emphasis on transforming as well as protecting productive livelihoods, and adapting to changing climate conditions rather than simply reinforcing coping mechanisms.
- An understanding of the structural causes of poverty in a particular region or sector, permitting more effective targeting of vulnerability to multiple shocks and stresses.
- Incorporation of a rights-based rationale for action, stressing equity and justice dimensions of chronic poverty and climate change adaptation, in addition to an instrumentalist rationale based on economic efficiency.
- An enhanced role for research from both the natural and social sciences to inform the development and targeting of social protection policies and measures in the context of both geophysical and changing climate-related hazards.
Roles for specific policies and instruments within social protections and climate change adaptation remain. However, the adaptive social protection framework analysis does permit the identification of a number of potential areas for future work that links these related fields together. These include:
- Improving the evidence base: Lessons learned, poverty impact and cost effectiveness
- Developing tools and resources: For example, climate risk assessment to be used with social protection programmes
- Supporting collaboration: Engaging in national and international events and conferences
- Funding adaptive social protection: Integrating social protection into adaptation funding and vice versa
- Encouraging dialogue between the disciplines.
