Keywords: Employment; Community Development; Climate Resilience; Livelihood
Definition
Public works programmes provide participants with paid work, usually for a predetermined duration, thereby supplementing income from other work and livelihood activities. A key element of these programmes is the requirement to work, usually within the local community or municipality.
While often linked to the construction or maintenance of local infrastructure, such programmes are increasingly also involved in natural resources management, ecosystem restoration, and community services work. Most programmes enable communities to prioritise the type of projects to be carried out in coordination with local authorities. Where programmes take the form of employment guarantee schemes, they are rights-based and provide a guaranteed number of days of work to all who are eligible.
Rationale
Public works and employment guarantee programmes contribute to reducing hunger and poverty through multiple channels:
- First, they increase individual or household income, especially during critical periods such as agricultural lean seasons or in the aftermath of shocks.
- Second, they generate productive assets and services, such as irrigation infrastructure or restored land, which can increase local agricultural productivity and expand access to basic services. Where activities are centred on building and strengthening food system infrastructure, impacts on hunger and malnutrition are further multiplied. 3. Third, they strengthen the agency of individuals and communities by enabling them to prioritise and plan the work to be carried out.
- Fourth, they can provide opportunities for skills development and work experience, thereby improving future livelihoods and labour market prospects.
- Finally, some public works programmes provide remuneration in the form of food, with a direct and measurable impact on hunger.
Key Features
- Eligibility and targeting: Various eligibility criteria can be applied depending on programme objectives. Common targeting approaches include food-insecure households, the long-term unemployed, seasonal workers, and households living below the poverty line. It is important to design public works programmes that do not discriminate against persons with disabilities or pregnant and breastfeeding women.
- Local contexts: Public works programmes are implemented in both rural and urban areas, with the largest programmes concentrated in rural areas. In urban areas, they are most widespread where there is high urban unemployment or underemployment, or where there is a need to respond to job losses during times of crisis.
- Wages: Wages are typically set at the minimum wage or the local market wage for similar work, with some programmes providing food-based remuneration (food-for-work programmes) rather than cash.
- Regularity and shock-responsiveness: Some programmes emphasise regularity and predictability by offering recurring work, for instance, during specific seasons or periods of the year. In other cases, programmes may be introduced or scaled up before, during or after shocks, including climate shocks.
- Integration with other policy instruments: Public works programmes can be integrated with other measures, cash transfers, social security contributions, skills training, and savings groups. There is also increasing recognition of their value in supporting environmental goals, including climate adaptation and shocks mitigation.
Working age populations, typically low-income, unemployed or underemployed and their dependents
Prior conditions required for success in implementation:
- These programmes target working-age persons. They are most effective when combined with other social protection measures that are able to reach those not able to work. Care should also be taken to make sure that the programmes target unemployed and underemployed and avoids incentivizing people to give up on other livelihoods or jobs to take up work in the programmes.
- These programmes require significant management capacity to make sure that the assets and services are designed, executed and maintained to the required standards. They provide good opportunities for combining skills development, allowing participants to put skills into practice during the work and improving their future employability prospects.
- These programmes have sometimes been criticised for demanding hard, manual labour from poor and vulnerable people, including from food insecure households. Some programmes also had challenges in ensuring full respect for labour rights, for example, ensuring a safe and healthy work environment. For best impact, programmes should be aligned with overall development strategies aiming to improve living standards for target groups and contributing to the development of key assets and services. They should also be aligned to environmental and climate policies.
- Recruitment and targeting should be transparent to avoid nepotism and corruption. In order to enable women to participate in those programmes, it is a good practice to organize child care services on project sites as part of the public work programmes.
- Programs should avoid discriminating against people with disabilities or women who are pregnant or breastfeeding; alternative work options need to be available for these groups. Additionally, designing public works that confer marketable skills (such as the enhanced public works programs) help increase the long term impact on poverty, hunger, and malnutrition for enrolled participants. If public works activities are centered around building and strengthening the food system infrastructure, impacts on hunger and malnutrition are multiplied.
a) support the expansion of coverage of those either experiencing poverty or vulnerable to it in national social protection systems and addressing risks and contingencies throughout their lifecycle (SDG target 1.3), therefore, contributing to the progressive realization of the right to social security, b) contribute to the realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security in order to achieve a world free from hunger (SDG targets 2.1 and 2.3), c) support access to basic services (education, health, water and sanitation and housing), productive assets, appropriate technology (prioritizing low-carbon options), information, integrated social and economic inclusion programmes, skill building (including technical assistance and extension services in rural areas), financial inclusion, decent employment creation and access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food (e.g.,home-grown school meal programmes) (SDG targets 1.4, 2.1 and 2.2), and h) reduce the exposure and vulnerability and increase the resilience of poor and vulnerable populations to climate related-extreme events and social, economic, and environmental shocks and disasters, as well as their capacity to properly respond to these shocks, when they occur (SDG targets 1.5 and 2.4)
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