How social protection can help tackle the risks faced by climate-vulnerable populations

Current measures to address climate vulnerability and risk – whether disaster response, adaptation or mitigation – are insufficient. Meanwhile, these risks are escalating, and the international humanitarian architecture is already overstretched. These factors provide is a strong imperative for social protection to play a larger role in acting early to reduce these risks.

A new publication by the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership (REAP) and UK Aid sets out how an integrated approach – one that combines early action and social protection – can change how we address the risks faced by climate-vulnerable populations. This will also support REAP’s goal to make 1 billion people safer from disaster by 2025.

The report argues that we must invest in social protection to ensure those most affected by climate change can strengthen their resilience capacity and avoid the worst impacts of disasters. To achieve this, government, climate and humanitarian stakeholders must:

• embrace social protection
• strengthen and expand social protection systems
• coordinate across these sectors
• build operational links
• push financing ‘out of the box’
• work in partnership
• put gender and inclusion at the centre of responses
• invest in data and evidence.

You can read more about this report here, and download it from this link (PDF).