Adaptive Social Protection

Global processes and crises are changing and deepening the risks already faced by poor and vulnerable people in developing countries. The aim of government and the international community is to respond to these threats through a range of policy and practical approaches that help limit damage from shocks and stresses. Three approaches to risk and vulnerability reduction that have become particularly prominent in recent years are social protection, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation. Social protection’ describes all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised (Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler, 2006).

Although these approaches have much in common, such as a concern with building livelihood resilience, they have developed as separate approaches over the last two decades. However, given the increasingly complex and interlinked array of risks that poor and vulnerable people face, it is likely that social protection, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation will not be sufficient in the long run if they continue to be applied in isolation from one another. In addition, there are considerable potential advantages to looking across approaches and finding ways of maximising effectiveness and efficiency in the field whilst avoiding duplication of effort.

Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) has been developed as an approach that combines key elements of social protection, DRR and climate change adaptation as a means to increase the livelihoods resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people. In doing so, it aims to simultaneously tackle unsafe living conditions, counter the underlying causes of vulnerability, and promote people’s ability to adapt to a changing climate.

In April 2010, IDS was awarded funding for a new Programme entitled ‘Adaptive Social Protection in the Context of Agriculture and Food Security’ by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The Programme aims to enhance the ability of governments and development agencies in developing countries to build the resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people to the impacts of climate change by:

1. ensuring that social protection and DRR approaches and instruments are taken into consideration when designing and implementing climate change adaptation programmes, and
2. enabling social protection and DRR programmes to reduce poverty in a period of changing climate shocks and stresses.

Social protection, DRR and climate change adaptation: making the links

Social protection, DRR and climate change adaptation have mutual measures and broad objectives. They all seek to mitigate risks faced by poor people. They tackle the impact of, and seek to build resilience against, shocks and stresses on livelihoods. More . . .

 

Making social protection work for climate variability and change

 Agriculture and other types of natural resource-dependent societies in developing countries are coming under increasing pressure due to climate change. This is predicted to have knock-on effects for rural livelihoods and attainment of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, which is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. More . . .

 

Climate impacts on social protection systems

It is becoming increasingly recognised that social initiatives in the agricultural and food security sectors are as much at risk from climate change as other development approaches, and are unlikely to succeed in reducing poverty if they do not consider the short and long-term shocks associated with climate change. More . . .