Challenging assumptions about social protection

What do old-age pensions have to do with climate disasters? Not much. Well, that’s at least what most people think – including civil servants and donors we talked to for BRACED research on social protection and resilience to disasters in Kenya and Uganda (report forthcoming).

Yet when you talk to those who receive old-age pensions, such as the Senior Citizens’ Grant in Uganda, the story is very different. The cash allows them to buy food, pay for their grandchildren’s school expenses and, once in a while, buy a goat.

During times of drought they can rely on the pension to cover their most urgent expenses without having to chop down trees to sell charcoal or their goat or take their grandchildren out of school and send them to work – all responses that in one way or another can have long-lasting negative impacts on their lives and the environment.

As part of BRACED we want to challenge some of the assumptions around the role of different social protection programmes (e.g. old age pensions, child grants and public works) in building resilience to climate-related shocks and disasters, to provide insights that improve resilience programming by focusing efforts of governments and development partners on what works.   

For this, we ask some key questions:

1. How does social protection allow people to absorb the impacts of shocks? – Cash transfers help people cope with shocks by allowing them to meet their most immediate needs without engaging in negative coping strategies. But what is striking is that the expectation of what cash transfers can do differs depending on how they are packaged.

The cash transfer delivered through the Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) to vulnerable households in arid and semi-arid lands in Kenya is perceived by policymakers as helping people cope with recurring droughts. Yet the child grant for orphans and vulnerable children is not perceived as a programme that helps people deal with climate risks – despite both being cash transfers for vulnerable households which beneficiaries use for similar purposes (food, school expenses, and health care). What is decisive for reducing vulnerability of households, is to receive the transfers in a timely and predictable way.

So we wonder: Is it why you do it, or how you do it, that is more important to help people cope with shocks?

2. What is the role of social protection in building systems that can anticipate shocks to prevent disasters? - Programmes like the Hunger Safety Net Programme have set impressive examples of how cash can be delivered to vulnerable households all year round, as well as deliver support to additional people in moments of extreme drought.

By setting up targeting, financing and delivery mechanisms in advance of a shock, systems can be put in place that  provide vehicles for delivering cost-effective and timely humanitarian assistance. But can this always be done, and what are different mechanisms for delivery and financing?

3. What about long-term adaptation to help people move out of poverty despite climate risks? - Receiving timely humanitarian assistance prevents people from falling back or further into poverty.

But will it help them get out of poverty in the long term? And does this build their own capacity to deal with shocks? To reduce long-term vulnerability to climate risks, livelihoods need to adapt – yet an understanding of how social protection can contribute to sustainable livelihoods in a changing climate is still weak, both in practice and in theory. How can we understand this better?

To find out more about these issues and recent BRACED research join our webinar on October 18 at 1pm (GMT). Speakers include Rachel Slater (ODI), Cecilia Costella (Red Cross Climate Centre) and Martina Ulrichs (ODI). You can register here.