Premium
Building resilience to climate risks through social protection: from individualised models to systemic transformation
Author(s) -
Ulrichs Martina,
Slater Rachel,
Costella Cecilia
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/disa.12339
Subject(s) - social protection , resilience (materials science) , warning system , psychological resilience , business , climate change , poison control , environmental planning , environmental resource management , risk analysis (engineering) , computer security , political science , economic growth , engineering , economics , geography , environmental health , computer science , medicine , psychology , social psychology , ecology , physics , aerospace engineering , biology , thermodynamics
This article analyses the role of social protection programmes in contributing to people's resilience to climate risks. Drawing from desk‐based and empirical studies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, it finds that social transfers make a strong contribution to the capacity of individuals and households to absorb the negative impacts of climate‐related shocks and stresses. They do so through the provision of reliable, national social safety net systems—even when these are not specifically designed to address climate risks. Social protection can also increase the anticipatory capacity of national disaster response systems through scalability mechanisms, or pre‐emptively through linkages to early action and early warning mechanisms. Critical knowledge gaps remain in terms of programmes’ contributions to the adaptive capacity required for long‐term resilience. The findings offer insights beyond social protection on the importance of robust, national administrative systems as a key foundation to support people's resilience to climate risks.