Climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and social protection: complementary roles in agriculture and rural growth?

Reliance on subsistence agriculture means that the impact of stresses and shocks, such as droughts or floods, are immediately felt by the rural poor. This working paper is warning that with climate change, the magnitude and frequency of stresses and shocks that affect agriculture are increasing. Therefore, approaches such as social protection, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) will be needed to bolster local resilience and supplement people’s experience.

The study examines the opportunities for linking social protection, CCA and DRR in the context of agriculture and rural growth. In addition, the paper explores whether linking these three approaches together will help enhance resilience to shocks and stresses in agriculture-dependent rural communities.
The authors make the following notable findings:

• social protection and DRR measures designed to limit damages from shocks and stresses may not be sufficient in the longer term
• for social protection to be resilient to climate change impacts, it will need to consider how reducing dependence on climate sensitive livelihood activities can be part of adaptive strategies
• similarly, CCA and DRR cannot effectively address the root causes of poverty and vulnerability without taking a differentiated view of poverty
• what is needed is something that further integration with social protection can help with.
  

As a result, the authors suggest the following ways to achieve the goal:

• climate proofing social protection through a long-term vision in the context of more reliable and accurate predictions and consideration of vulnerability
• policy and programmatic options for climate change adaptation
• preventative and holistic poverty approach for DRR 
• an improved growth focus for agriculture
  

Moreover, the paper indicates the establishment of a framework called “Adaptive Social Protection”. The framework includes social protection measures that are resilient to disaster risks, and that acknowledge the changing nature of climate-related impacts including the future existence of new conditions.