Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks

This document provides a framework for building household resilience through adaptive social protection (ASP). It addresses how social protection systems can be prepared and enhanced to mitigate the impacts of covariate shocks, such as natural disasters and economic crises. The intended audience includes policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working in social protection, disaster risk management, and climate change adaptation. The report offers practical guidance for designing and implementing ASP strategies that effectively build household resilience.

Key Insights

A Framework for Adaptive Social Protection

This report outlines and elaborates on a concise framework to help inform the design and implementation of Adaptive Social Protection (ASP). The framework delineates four key building blocks for the development of ASP: (1) programs, (2) data and information systems, (3) finance, and (4) institutional arrangements and partnerships (Bowen et al., 2020, p. 9).

Resilience to Shocks: The Capacity to Prepare, Cope, and Adapt

The document defines resilience as the ability for a household to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks in a manner that protects their well-being: ensuring that they do not fall into poverty or become trapped in poverty as a result of the impacts (Bowen et al., 2020, p. 3). A more resilient household will possess three interlinked capacities that help to minimize and resist a shock’s negative impacts: capacity to prepare, cope with, and adapt to it.

Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience by Supporting the Capacity to Prepare, Cope, and Adapt

Adaptive social protection helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households by investing in their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks: protecting their wellbeing and ensuring that they do not fall into poverty or become trapped in poverty as a result of the impacts (Bowen et al., 2020, p. 6). Together, social safety nets, social insurance, and labor market programs constitute the social protection “system”.

Programs: Design Considerations for Building Resilience

To enhance their impact on resilience building, safety net programs need to be explicitly designed to support the capacity of poor and vulnerable households to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face. A stronger social protection system with higher coverage across several programs provides more avenues for reaching poor and vulnerable households with assistance before and after shocks.

Data and Information: Understanding Risk and Household Vulnerability

Investing in an improved understanding of risk and household vulnerability. Data and information strengthening are at the core of the ASP agenda. Integrating poverty and vulnerability data with disaster risk assessments enables a spatial understanding of household vulnerability to shocks. Expanding social registry coverage within high-risk areas ensures more frequent updating.

Finance: Applying a Disaster Risk Financing Approach

Disaster risk financing is part of a global shift in thinking from seeing disasters as unpredictable humanitarian crises to predictable events that can be planned for and managed to minimize their impact. Applying risk financing can transform the ability to mobilize a faster response through a social protection system. Financial instruments, by frequency and severity of a shock should be considered.

Institutional Arrangements and Partnerships: Multisectoral Coordination and Humanitarian Linkages

Institutional arrangements and partnerships: Multi-sectoral coordination and humanitarian linkages Adaptive Social Protection inherently requires multi sectoral coordination. Strong government leadership is necessary to ensure coordination of the often disconnected actors, based on a clear articulation of respective roles and responsibilities

Key Statistics & Data

• Climate change is expected to push an additional 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 (Hallegatte et al. 2016).
• 20 persons are estimated fleeing their homes every 60 seconds, and more than 64 million people being displaced worldwide in 2016 (UNHCR 2016).
• Safety nets tend to cover a small share of a poor person’s income/consumption, around 13% on average in low-income countries (World Bank 2018a).
• Safety nets beneficiary households in Africa are 4-20 percentage points more likely to save relative to comparable non-beneficiary households (figure 0.5)

Methodology

The document utilizes a framework-based approach to analyze adaptive social protection, drawing from existing literature and case studies. It integrates concepts from disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, and social protection to provide a comprehensive understanding of resilience-building.

Implications and Conclusions

The report articulates the need for comprehensive, coordinated strategies that integrate social protection, disaster risk management, and climate change adaptation to build household resilience effectively. Key implications include:

• Policy makers must increase investments towards building resilience to covariate shocks, promoting inter-sectoral coordination, enhancing the adaptive capacity and safety net programs.
• Scale up coverage in safety net and financial inclusion programs
• Increased government leadership through Internalizing responsibility to build the resilience
• Further research and analysis on the long-term impact and cost-effectiveness of these strategies are necessary.