Read Time:
Highlights
- This working paper makes the case for channeling more climate funds through existing social protection (SP) systems to get support to vulnerable communities faster, more efficiently, and at greater scale.
- Social protection systems already cover 4.7 billion people globally and can rapidly disburse funds in weeks using existing digital registries and payment infrastructure, as shown during the COVID-19 response and a recent case in Niger, where roll out from an early-warning trigger happened four months sooner than traditional humanitarian aid.
- Evidence from the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) shows that SP systems can deliver both routine and emergency assistance, reaching over 5 million people in the Sahel in 2023 alone —including 1.2 million with shock-response cash.
- Adaptive social protection can deliver a “triple dividend”—supporting short-term coping, long-term resilience, and economic inclusion. In Niger, productive-inclusion packages under SASPP lifted per-capita consumption by 60-100 percent.
- Aligning climate funds with SP systems is a practical way to expand reach, speed up delivery, and achieve more meaningful climate adaptation outcomes, especially in fragile and climate-exposed regions.
Executive Summary
The primary objective of climate funds is to finance climate action, including adaptation, mitigation, and addressing loss and damage, with the aim of building resilience among vulnerable populations affected by climate impacts such as shifting weather patterns and rising sea levels. However, these funds face challenges that mean climate finance is often slow to reach those most in need. Challenges include complex approval processes, difficulty aligning with national priorities, and limited capacity of local institutions to absorb and deploy funds effectively.
Social protection systems, which now cover over half of the world’s population, can offer a promising solution to these challenges by channeling direct climate funds efficiently to enhance climate resilience and adaptation among vulnerable populations. Social protection systems, including social registries, early warning systems, and delivery systems can engage large vulnerable populations due to their scale, flexibility, targeting and organizational capabilities, rapidly responding to climate shocks, and ensuring the efficient, transparent use of funds.
By integrating climate funds with social protection systems, the funds can leverage these systems to deliver support directly to the most climate-affected individuals and households quickly. This paper demonstrates how existing social protection systems could significantly contribute to the objectives of climate funds by presenting the World Bank’s Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) as an illustrative case study, focusing on three key dimensions: reach, efficiency, and impact. It will also explore some of the questions that will need to be addressed to realize this untapped opportunity.