Definition:

Integrated programmes (IPs) for climate and shock resilience are coordinated policy packages that combine social protection, livelihood support, and risk management interventions to reduce the vulnerability of poor households and strengthen their ability to anticipate, cope with, and adapt to climate shocks and crises.

Rationale:

They enhance the resilience of poor households to hazards – drought, floods, earthquakes, heatwaves, among others, by reducing their vulnerability and, potentially, their exposure to these hazards. They also help increase the resilience to severe food and nutrition insecurity often linked and exacerbated by the above-mentioned hazards.

Key initiatives:

The vulnerability of poor households is reduced through a combination of interventions (many of which are standalone policy instruments), such as:

1. Regular, predictable cash transfers to poor and vulnerable people to smooth their consumption and invest in their human capital, such as through improved nutrition, sending children to school and use of health services;
2. Productive economic inclusion activities, which support households to invest in productive assets, diversify their sources of income and livelihood and enhance their savings; and,
3. A public works program, which creates assets that reduce the exposure of rural communities to climate risks by (a) reducing or modifying the physical impacts of climate change through soil and water conservation activities and (b) reducing the vulnerability of communities by investing basic social infrastructure, such as health clinics and schools.
4. Dedicated crisis preparedness planning, which promote well-coordinated early action and the timely mobilization of contingency resources at scale to address food and nutrition security crises and mitigate related impacts.

While the provision of such integrated support will contribute towards climate and shock resilience, these benefits can be enhanced by re-evaluating their design and delivery with this objective in mind. This may lead to modifications in the design and delivery of these policy instruments, such as changing eligibility criteria to include people who live in areas that are vulnerable to climate change or providing information on climate change to beneficiaries so that they may take this into account in their decision-making.

Central to any initiative to respond to climate shocks and food and nutrition insecurity is the ability of a program to expand to reach additional people and provide additional support to existing beneficiaries in response to a shock. This may also require introducing changes to program design, such as waiving the requirement for people to work in exchange for a transfer when a shock occurs (for a public works program) or attend school (for a conditional cash transfer). The amounts paid to people may need to be increased or, in some cases, shifted to in-kind (i.e. food transfer). In addition, instead of ad hoc and fragmented crisis responses, a more  integrated and proactive system is needed to promote greater investment in crisis preparedness as well as additional and aligned resource mobilization. Preparedness Plans for Food and Nutrition Security Crises focus on evidence-based decision making and seek to bolster early warning systems so that early and anticipatory action can be mobilized in a timely manner.

These approaches are often referred to as shock-responsive social protection or adaptive social protection, which aim to strengthen the ability of systems and households to anticipate, cope with, and adapt to shocks.

Generally, these programs build upon the existing foundations of a social protection system. However, further investments are required by social protection and other sectors beyond the modifications to program design discussed above. These investments are in (i) data and information; (ii) financing and (iii) institutional arrangements and partnerships, as follows:

• Data and information: Poverty, food and nutrition security, and other vulnerability data can be integrated with disaster risk assessments to identify households highly exposed to hazards. Social protection information systems can be linked to early warning systems to predict who will need support and how much support is needed. Social registries can be expanded into and within high-risk areas, updated more frequently, and include variables related to households’ vulnerability and exposure to climate- driven extreme events. The goal is to have an information system that can provide a gateway to identify and quickly include households in need into adaptive social protection programs.
• Financing. The preparation of risk-financing strategies can enable the timely flow of funding to social protection programs in response to shocks. International experience has shown that governments ideally combine different financial instruments to protect against events of different frequency and severity. This approach, known as risk layering, is part of a comprehensive financial protection strategy that mobilizes different financial instruments, either before or after a disaster strikes, to address the evolving need for funds. Risk layering ensures that finance is released when it is needed most, proportionate to the size of event helping to ensure that the most expensive instruments are used only in exceptional circumstances.
• Institutional arrangements and partnerships. Building household resilience is a multidisciplinary and interagency task. Thus, implementing adaptive social protection requires the involvement of actors from various sectors, namely disaster risk management and climate change (CC), in addition to social protection. Strong government leadership can ensure the coordination of actors by articulating clear roles and responsibilities and establishing standards and procedures that can guide the integration of the different sectors of social protection, disaster risk management and climate change as well as non-government institutions like humanitarian actors.

Anticipatory action is an innovation within the humanitarian sector that aims to prevent or reduce the adverse effects of shocks on lives and livelihoods before the impacts fully manifest, by acting ahead of the predicted hazard. Anticipatory action sits on a continuum of policy options, ranging from disaster risk reduction and preparedness to response. As a more general term, early response refers to support that is delivered to affected households much earlier than the status quo. This can include rapid response programs that are implemented immediately after a shock or crisis occurs. Both approaches intend to deliver assistance at a critical time when it can have the greatest impact in mitigating the effects of a shock on affected populations.

Three key ingredients need to be pre-arranged for both anticipatory action and an early response through shock-responsive social protection to be effective:

1. Pre-agreed financing: A defined amount of funding is secured in advance to address an estimated need and can be released quickly in the event of a shock.
2. Triggers: Decision rules decide when and where a hazardous event will occur and thus when and where to act, including the release of pre-arranged funding. These decision rules speed up the response time relative to the shock by reducing the time taken to assess the situation and make decisions. Basing these decision rules on forecasts and predictive analytics further advance the response, allowing for action before the impacts of a shock materialize or even before the hazard itself occurs. The effectiveness of these triggers depends entirely on the availability of high-quality data and accurate forecasting models. Thus, the quality of these triggers can vary substantially across different contexts for the same hazard type, such as floods.
3. Action plan: A comprehensive plan is developed in advance, outlining the specific measures to be implemented in response to a shock. These actions are designed to support the most critical needs and decisions of affected households at the time of the response, which is context and hazard dependent. The plan should also define clear eligibility criteria, targeting modalities and payment methods to ensure that support quickly reaches the most vulnerable and affected populations. Additionally, it should include an estimate of the number of people to be reached and the extent of support, as well as options for “surge capacity” if existing staffing and other resources are deemed to be insufficient.

Continuous learning and refinement through sound monitoring and evaluation are an essential fourth ingredient for successfully scaling up anticipatory action and early response.