Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-7 (section)

==== 7.4.2.2 Policies to secure social protection ====

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There is ''medium evidence'' and ''high agreement'' from all regions of the world that safety nets and social protection schemes can provide stability which prevents and reduces abject poverty (Barrientos 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r419|419]]</sup> ; Hossain 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r420|420]]</sup> ; Cook and Pincus 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r421|421]]</sup> ; Huang and Yang 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r422|422]]</sup> ; Slater 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r423|423]]</sup> ; Sparrow et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r424|424]]</sup> ; Rodriguez-Takeuchi and Imai 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r425|425]]</sup> ; Bamberg et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r426|426]]</sup> ) in the face of climatic stressors and land change (Davies et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r427|427]]</sup> ; Cutter et al. 2012b <sup>[[#fn:r428|428]]</sup> ; Pelling 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r429|429]]</sup> ; Ensor 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r430|430]]</sup> ).

The World Bank estimates that, globally, social safety net transfers have reduced the absolute poverty gap by 45% and the relative poverty gap by 16% (World Bank 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r431|431]]</sup> ). Adaptive social protection builds household capacity to deal with shocks as well as the capacity of social safety nets to respond to shocks. For low-income communities reliant on land and climate for their livelihoods and well-being, social protection provides a way for vulnerable groups to manage weather and climatic variability and deteriorating land conditions to household income and assets ( ''robust evidence, high agreement'' ) (Baulch et al. 2006 <sup>[[#fn:r432|432]]</sup> ; Barrientos 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r433|433]]</sup> ; Harris 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r434|434]]</sup> ; Fiszbein et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r435|435]]</sup> ; Kiendrebeogo et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r436|436]]</sup> ; Kabeer et al. 2010 <sup>[[#fn:r437|437]]</sup> ; FAO 2015b <sup>[[#fn:r438|438]]</sup> ; Warner et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r439|439]]</sup> ; World Bank 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r440|440]]</sup> ).

A lifecycle approach to social protection is one approach, which some countries (such as Bangladesh) are using when developing national social protection policies. These policies acknowledge that households face risks across the lifecycle that they need to be protected from. If shocks are persistent, or occur numerous times, then policies can address concerns of a more structural nature (Glauben et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r441|441]]</sup> ). Barrett (2005) <sup>[[#fn:r442|442]]</sup> , for example, distinguishes between the role of safety nets (which include programmes such as emergency feeding programmes, crop or unemployment insurance, disaster assistance, etc.) and cargo nets (which include land reforms, targeted microfinance, targeted school food programmes, etc.). While the former prevents non-poor and transient poor from becoming chronically poor, the latter is meant to lift people out of poverty by changing societal or institutional structures. The graduation approach has adopted such systematic thinking with successful results (Banerjee et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r443|443]]</sup> ).

Social protection systems can provide buffers against shocks through vertical or horizontal expansion, ‘piggybacking’ on pre-established programmes, aligning social protection and humanitarian systems or refocusing existing resources (Wilkinson et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r444|444]]</sup> ; O’Brien et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r445|445]]</sup> ; Jones and Presler-Marshall 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r446|446]]</sup> ). There is increasing evidence that forecast-based financing, linked to a social protection, can be used to enable anticipatory actions based on forecast triggers, and guarantee funding ahead of a shock (Jjemba et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r447|447]]</sup> ). Accordingly, scaling up social protection based on an early warning could enhance timeliness, predictability and adequacy of social protection benefits (Kuriakose et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r448|448]]</sup> ; Costella et al. 2017a <sup>[[#fn:r449|449]]</sup> ; Wilkinson et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r450|450]]</sup> ; O’Brien et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r451|451]]</sup> ).

Countries at high risk of natural disasters often have lower safety-net coverage percent (World Bank 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r452|452]]</sup> ), and there is ''medium evidence'' and ''medium agreement'' that those countries with few financial and other buffers have lower economic and social performance (Cutter et al. 2012b <sup>[[#fn:r453|453]]</sup> ; Outreville 2011a <sup>[[#fn:r454|454]]</sup> ). Social protection systems have also been seen as an unaffordable commitment of public budget in many developing and low-income countries (Harris 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r455|455]]</sup> ). National systems may be disjointed and piecemeal, and subject to cultural acceptance and competing political ideologies (Niño-Zarazúa et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r456|456]]</sup> ). For example, Liberia and Madagascar each have five different public works programmes, each with different donor organisations and different implementing agencies (Monchuk 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r457|457]]</sup> ). These implementation shortcomings mean that positive effects of social protection systems might not be robust enough to shield recipients completely against the impacts of severe shocks or from long-term losses and damages from climate change ( ''limited evidence, high agreement'' ) (Davies et al. 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r458|458]]</sup> ; Umukoro 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r459|459]]</sup> ; Béné et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r460|460]]</sup> ; Ellis et al. 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r461|461]]</sup> ).

There is increasing support for establishment of public-private safety nets to address climate-related shocks, which are augmented by proactive preventative (adaptation) measures and related risk transfer instruments that are affordable to the poor (Kousky et al. 2018b <sup>[[#fn:r462|462]]</sup> ). Studies suggest that the adaptive capacity of communities has improved with regard to climate variability, like drought, when ex-ante tools, including insurance, have been employed holistically; providing insurance in combination with early warning and institutional and policy approaches reduces livelihood and food insecurity as well as strengthens social structures (Shiferaw et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r463|463]]</sup> ; Lotze-Campen and Popp 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r464|464]]</sup> ). Bundling insurance with early warning and seasonal forecasting can reduce the cost of insurance premiums (Daron and Stainforth 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r465|465]]</sup> ). The regional risk insurance scheme, African Risk Capacity, has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of insurance premiums (Siebert 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r466|466]]</sup> ) while bolstering contingency planning against food insecurity.

Work-for-insurance programmes applied in the context of social protection have been shown to improve livelihood and food security in Ethiopia (Berhane 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r467|467]]</sup> ; Mohmmed et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r468|468]]</sup> ) and Pakistan. The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative in Ethiopia is a widely cited example of a programme that serves the most vulnerable and includes aspects of resource management, and access by the poor to financial services, including insurance and savings (Linnerooth-Bayer et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r469|469]]</sup> ). Weather index insurance (such as index-based crop insurance) is being presented to low-income farmers and pastoralists in developing countries (e.g., Ethiopia, India, Kazakhstan, South Asia) to complement informal risk sharing, reducing the risk of lost revenue associated with variations in crop yield, and provide an alternative to classic insurance (Bogale 2015a <sup>[[#fn:r470|470]]</sup> ; Conradt et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r471|471]]</sup> ; Dercon et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r472|472]]</sup> ; Greatrex et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r473|473]]</sup> ; McIntosh et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r474|474]]</sup> ). The ability of insurance to contribute to adaptive capacity depends on the overall risk management and livelihood context of households – studies find that agriculturalists and foresters working on rainfed farms/land with more years of education and credit but limited off-farm income are more willing to pay for insurance than households who have access to remittances (such as from family members who have migrated) (Bogale 2015a <sup>[[#fn:r475|475]]</sup> ; Gan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r476|476]]</sup> ; Hewitt et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r477|477]]</sup> ; Nischalke 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r478|478]]</sup> ). In Europe, modelling suggests that insurance incentives, such as vouchers, would be less expensive than total incentivised damage reduction and may reduce residential flood risk in Germany by 12% in 2016 and 24% by 2040 (Hudson et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r479|479]]</sup> ).

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