Helpdesk

Question
Climate Change and Social Protection: How are social protection mechanisms being used to assist vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change (with particular attention to women and children)?

Helpdesk response
Key findings: The primary coping strategies and protection measures identified from this Helpdesk research are:

• Compensation mitigation measures, such as microinsurance and weather-risk crop insurance. In some cases, safety net approaches (e.g. public works, school feeding programmes) are linked to insurance payouts.
• Ex-ante adaptation measures, such as crop diversification (e.g. technical assistance, starter packs, seed fairs), irrigation systems, flood safe storage facilities, relocation, livelihood diversification and protection (e.g. legislated employment guarantees).
• Ex-post adaptation measures, such as cash transfers (e.g. unconditional cash payments, social pensions, child support grants), asset restocking/ sale of assets (e.g. ‘meat aid’ programmes, where the weakest animals are sold for cash), nutritional/feeding programmes.

Full response: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD520.pdf