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- Convenors:
-
Daniele Malerba
(German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS))
Mauricio Boehl (IDOS)
Francesco Burchi (German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS))
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Social protection, health, and inequality
Short Abstract:
Social protection has a great potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, but the evidence is still limited and, above all, it is not yet clear how to translate it in practice. This panel will explore these issues to better foster climate action through social protection
Description:
This panel scrutinizes the role of social protection in climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Such role is critical for many reasons. On the one hand, effects of climate change will have severe consequences for poor households who have less capabilities to adapt, anticipate or cope with the effects of climate change. This was the core of the Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) framework. On the other hand, the need to account for distributional effects in mitigation policies for climate change has become increasingly evident in recent years. In fact, research showed that distributional fairness is the main determinant of climate policy acceptability for citizens, making social protection mechanisms an ideal channel to ensure fairness in climate mitigation policies. For example, the redistribution of revenues from environmental taxes or labour market policies can ease transitions towards green jobs.
While the potential role of social protection for climate change is clear, the more insights on the implementation in practice is needed; more and better evidence can enlighten how to design social protection policies that promote effective climate action and avoid maladaptation. Moreover, the role of social protection in climate change needs to better address political economy issues.
The panel is open to contributions from different disciplines and different methodologies. In addition, the panel will look at both case studies of how social protection policies have been implemented (implicitly or explicitly) to foster climate change adaptation or mitigation, but also at cross-country analyses and review papers.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how social protection is integrated into the broader climate change resilience-building strategies, assessing its capacity to address the long-term psychological effects on displaced children.
Paper long abstract:
Social protection is central to the global commitment to “leave no one behind,” offering a critical safety net against poverty, shocks, and enhancing resilience to climate-related stresses. While the existing framework primarily focus on economic support through cash transfers and livelihood support, it offers a crucial but underutilized mechanism for addressing the psychological health needs of displaced children as a result of climate change. In sub-Saharan Africa where adaptive capacity remains limited, displacement due to climate hazards exacerbates health inequalities, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations.
The Volta Delta, within Ghana’s southeastern coastal region is among the most climate-vulnerable regions, facing recurrent flooding, sea-level rise, and coastal erosion. These climate hazards force families into cyclical displacement, disrupting access to essential services such as mental healthcare. Drawing on a mixed-method approach, findings indicate that for children, the instability and weakened social and caregiving structures associated with displacement leads to significant psychological distress, including heightened levels of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, there are significant challenges to accord social protection to safeguard the rights of children in these communities. This paper examines how social protection is integrated into the broader climate change resilience-building strategies, assessing its capacity to address the long-term psychological effects on displaced children. Strengthening the Adaptive Social Protection framework by integrating comprehensive psychological health services is crucial to upholding children's fundamental rights to health and well-being, and reinforcing children's resilience, dignity, and agency in the face of displacement as a result of the ongoing climate crisis.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how social protection policies can enhance food crisis resilience amid climate change in Osogbo Metropolis, Nigeria. It will analyze the effectiveness of existing interventions, policy gaps, and adaptive strategies, offering insights into strengthening social safety nets.
Paper long abstract:
The intersection of social protection and climate resilience is crucial for addressing food insecurity in vulnerable regions. This study will investigate the role of social protection mechanisms in mitigating food crises in Osogbo Metropolis, Nigeria, a city facing climate-induced challenges such as erratic rainfall, flooding, and declining agricultural productivity.
Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, the research will assess how government-led programs, community-based interventions, and informal coping strategies contribute to food security. It will identify policy gaps in social protection frameworks, particularly in addressing climate-induced food shortages and economic shocks.
The findings will provide policy recommendations for integrating climate adaptation strategies into social protection systems to enhance resilience. This research aligns with Panel P26’s focus on translating theory and evidence into better social protection practices, ensuring food security in climate-vulnerable communities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores central banks' contribution to social protection and climate resilience through subsidized financing, risk-sharing and financial inclusion policies. It highlights innovative strategies from Central Bank of Pakistan to reduce vulnerabilities and foster sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
Social protection traditionally falls under fiscal policy, but this paper argues that central banks can also play a critical role by addressing poverty and vulnerability through their proxies, such as inflation and exchange rate stability, targeted financing schemes and financial inclusion initiatives. Drawing on evidence from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), we demonstrate how subsidized financing programs for SMEs and agriculture sector empower vulnerable groups to adopt renewable energy, energy-efficient technologies and climate-resilient agricultural practices. Specialized lending for youth and women entrepreneurs further promotes sustainability and economic inclusivity.
As being the regulatory authority, the central bank’s role of distributional fairness through social protection mechanisms in climate mitigation policies cannot be underestimated. The State Bank of Pakistan fosters access to finance via digital platforms, providing critical support to smallholder farmers and low-income individuals to mitigate the negative impacts of climate-related disasters. Nonetheless, there exist barriers in the form of weaker institutions which in the presence of power politics and elite capture, hampers progress towards fairness in climate mitigation policies. Therefore, utilizing a first-hand data set from SBP, this study critically examines the potential for central banks to facilitate the development of parametric and area-yield insurance products to protect agriculture and SMEs against climate-induced income losses. Additionally, we discuss the issuance and adoption of green bonds as a tool to finance climate-resilient projects that safeguard vulnerable communities.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the extent to which the recently revised public works program in Malawi affects household resilience to climate-related shocks, through the asset created by the program. The study relies on different qualitative methods employed during the fieldwork conducted in 2024.
Paper long abstract:
One of the main arguments for implementing public works programs (PWPs) instead of other social protection schemes like cash transfers is that the assets created through these programs could generate medium to long-term benefits. This is also important as the costs for the supervision and construction materials account for approximately half of program budget. Despite this, there is scarce empirical evidence of PWPs’ effects through the “asset channel”: indeed, most of the studies have focused only on the traditional “wage channel”. To bridge this gap, the paper examines the extent to which the assets created through Malawi’s Climate-Smart Enhanced Public Works Program, a program implemented by the government of Malawi and funded by the World Bank, enhances the resilience of households to climate shocks, such as drought and floods. The study mostly relies on focus group discussions and interviews with different stakeholders at national, district and local level. These interviews were conducted during a fieldwork in September 2024 in two Southern districts of Malawi highly affected by climate change. The analysis is complemented with quantitative data on the quality of assets. By combining these different methods, we aim at understanding how the asset created through the program affects poor communities’ capacity to cope with, and adapt to the negative consequences of climate change, and what are the key factors that ensure the realization and maintenance over time of high-quality, impactful assets. This way, the paper intends to derive policy insights on how to design PWPs aiming at enhancing climate resilience.
Paper short abstract:
Through a global simulation, we show that a carbon tax plus revenue redistribution through existing and expanded social protection systems can significantly lower poverty; but investments in social protection are needed to spur such effects, together with international redistribution.
Paper long abstract:
Social protection are always advocated as import to mitigate negative effects of climate policies. As one important example, carbon taxes are a crucial environmental tax and policy option for curbing carbon emissions, but can deepen poverty and inequality; revenue recycling through social protection is proposed to offset these regressive impacts. Yet practical implementation issues remain largely unexplored and recycling mechanisms are explored using ideal mechanisms (per capita redistribution) and neglecting mostly the global dimension.
We implement an innovative quantitative approach by constructing and using a Social Accounting Matrix-based model, merging data from household surveys, consumption surveys, and I-O tables for 168 countries. We then simulate different type of carbon taxes (consumption versus production taxes, luxury taxes versus uniform taxes, nationally differentiated taxes), different national revenue recycling mechanisms (per capita redistribution, redistribution using current and COVID-19 social assistance programs), and different global revenue recycling mechanisms through a global fund (using different justice criteria).
Our findings indicate that paring a luxury consumption tax with revenue recycling through an expanded social assistance system as during the COVID-19 pandemic could achieve the most substantial reduction in extreme poverty. Furthermore, establishing a global carbon tax revenue fund financed by developed nations and distributed to lower income countries based on poverty headcounts could markedly reduce poverty and inequality both within and between countries. However, substantial improvements in social assistance systems are urgently needed, especially in Sub-Saharan African countries. Overall, this study provides a viable pathway for synchronizing carbon mitigation with social protection and poverty alleviation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper shows how cash transfers act as adaptive social protection, mitigating the combined impacts of climate change and conflict. Using machine learning and diverse datasets, it highlights the dual role of social protection in climate adaptation and humanitarian resilience.
Paper long abstract:
Armed conflict and climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa pose significant challenges to the well-being of vulnerable children and the broader sustainable development goals. This study examines the role of cash transfers in mitigating the adverse effects of these polycrises on individual outcomes, including school attendance and food insecurity. Using causal forests, a machine learning approach, we approximate the causal impact of three types of cash transfers under varying scenarios shaped by conflict intensity and climate-related stressors such as droughts. To achieve this, we integrate household survey data from UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) with satellite-based rainfall and drought data, alongside geo-coded conflict records derived from news sources.
The analysis explores how cash transfers function as a form of adaptive social protection, particularly in regions where environmental shocks exacerbate vulnerabilities caused by armed conflict. By highlighting the interplay between climate variability, conflict, and social protection measures, this research underscores the critical role of cash transfers in enhancing resilience among affected populations. The findings contribute to a growing body of evidence on the potential for social protection systems to serve as climate change mitigation strategies while addressing urgent humanitarian needs.
Paper short abstract:
Social protection, a key component of SDG1, can break poverty cycles while supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation. This paper analyses Sub-Saharan Africa's NDCs, revealing limited integration of social protection. It highlights geopolitical and economic factors shaping outcomes.
Paper long abstract:
Achieving the interconnected goals of poverty reduction under SDG1 and climate action under the Paris Agreement is essential. Climate change disproportionately affects impoverished communities, deepening vulnerabilities and risking entrenched poverty, not least in Sub-Saharan Africa. Conversely, poorly designed climate policies and transitions to renewable energy—though vital for sustainable development—could exacerbate inequalities, food insecurity, and reduced incomes if not managed carefully. Social protection is a critical component of SDG1, capable of breaking cycles of poverty by equipping vulnerable communities with resources to adapt to the impacts of climate change and climate action.
This paper examines whether and how social protection measures are integrated into climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in Sub-Saharan African countries. It develops four conceptual categories of social protection as a tool to shield the economy and vulnerable communities from the adverse effects of climate change and the transition. The framework is applied using a dual mixed-method approach. First, the updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of all Sub-Saharan African countries are analysed to assess the inclusion of social protection mechanisms in climate strategies using the four categories. Second, informed by the results, the paper reviews individual country cases using document analysis. Findings indicate limited integration: only six measures reference social insurance or cash transfers, four propose social safety nets and basic social protection, and five refer to labor market measures. The paper concludes by theorising the geopolitical and political economy factors that influence how social protection policies can support climate change mitigation and adaptation effectively.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how faith-based women's organizations and community watchdogs were leveraged in Nigeria’s RCCE project to deliver social protection during COVID-19. Lessons from these partnerships inform the design of gender-responsive systems for climate-related crises.
Paper long abstract:
Social protection systems are the key tools for addressing the disproportionate impact of crises on vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls, including climate-related disasters. This paper examines the UN Women-led Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) project in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic, consistent with the Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) framework. By combining unconditional cash transfers with risk communication strategies, the RCCE project provided critical safety nets to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic for at-risk women, adolescent girls, and vulnerable groups in regions also affected by climate-induced stressors such as flooding, land degradation, and human displacements
The study draws on KII, FGDs and document reviews to evaluate the RCCE’s implementation. The data captured insights from beneficiaries, faith-based leaders, and community stakeholders, highlighting the programme effectiveness and challenges. Central to the RCCE’s success was its innovative use of Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN), the Women’s Wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria, the Girls Guides, and Women Watch Groups (WWGs) as implementing partners. These grassroots partnerships enhanced distributional fairness, ensuring that resources reached the most vulnerable while fostering trust and community ownership.
The findings underscore the potential of localized, gender-responsive social protection mechanisms to address the intersection of climate change, poverty, and gender inequality. By prioritizing equity and leveraging community-driven implementation, social protection systems can foster resilience and promote fairness in climate mitigation policies. We call on policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to embrace gender-sensitive, locally adapted practices as core components of climate-responsive social protection frameworks.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the adaptation strategies and governance challenges in the implementation of the national affordable housing policy in a flood-prone Indian coastal town. It highlights the importance of contextual institutional frameworks for social policy and climate resilience integration.
Paper long abstract:
Scholarship in social protection and climate adaptation domains increasingly emphasize the need to mainstream climate adaptation and resilience into social policies to enhance community resilience to climate change-induced disasters. In line with this, the national affordable housing policy of India (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana) has recently promoted technologies for climate-resilient housing and converges with existing urban development schemes to promote climate resilience. However, there is limited understanding of the existing implementation of this policy in climate-sensitive regions, the climate adaptation outcomes, and subsequent governance issues. This paper addresses this question by empirically examining the adaptation strategies adopted by the scheme beneficiaries and perceptions of policy actors around climate change and affordable housing, in a flood-prone coastal town in India. The surveys and interviews reveal four key findings. First, behavioral changes to the built environment account for a significant share of adaptation strategies. Second, these strategies require approximately 4 times beneficiary allocations. Third, while the housing may be resilient to intermittent floods, beneficiaries incur debts thus reducing long-term adaptive capacities. Fourth, limited access to developable flood-resistant land, transport infrastructure, and formal housing finance are key impediments. The findings indicate that while the scheme has been beneficial in pushing the adaptation agenda, the success of this integration and its translation into governance are varied. Long-term climate resilience needs institutional integration among disaster, land use and building codes, city-level infrastructure and services, housing finance, and livelihood diversification, thus underscoring the need for contextual institutional frameworks that ensure resilience and justice outcomes.