If financial assistance to address climate change is used more for the social protection of rural communities, it will facilitate more equitable adaptation – and ultimately strengthen climate protection.
Rising temperatures and increasingly frequent and intense weather events due to climate change are imperiling progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rural people – many of who are small-scale farmers – are particularly vulnerable due to their dependency on natural resources, poverty, limited access to services and resources, and a lack of infrastructure.
They are also a critical part of the solution. While small-scale farmers are not major contributors to global emissions, they are custodians of the world’s major natural ecosystems. We are witnessing a paradox in climate finance: while small-scale farmers are among the most vulnerable to climate change and can play a major role in reducing emissions, they receive only 1.7% of climate finance.
Social protection interventions aim to reduce social and economic risks and vulnerability, and to alleviate extreme poverty and deprivation. Social protection can also play an important catalytic role in enabling rural populations to benefit from, and participate in, efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, coverage of social protection is still far too low. For instance, in low-income countries, 80 percent of the poorest rural households have no access to social protection. A further concern is that the countries that are most exposed to climate risks are the ones with the lowest coverage of social protection.
It is critical to use climate finance for expanding coverage of social protection to rural populations and in turn making progress in climate adaptation and mitigation goals. This can help to realize a more inclusive, just, and effective response to the climate crisis.
Climate adaptation is costly and risky for small-scale farmers
Adapting to climate change entails substantial costs and risks that poor and vulnerable rural populations cannot afford. As a result, the adoption of climate adaptation practices is often quite low and where adoption occurs, it tends to be concentrated among better-off farmers that can pay for the upfront costs and handle the risks.
Due to poverty and lack of access to credit, insurance and basic services, the decision-making of poor farmers focuses mainly on meeting their day-to-day needs at the cost of long-term investments and returns. For instance, they may have to sacrifice sending children to school so as to be able to afford a meal or they may have to fell trees to use as firewood rather than keeping them as protective cover for their land. These decisions and vulnerabilities lock people into poverty traps, making them more vulnerable to future climate risks.
In addition, efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from agriculture and land use can undermine the welfare of rural people. Mitigation typically entails protecting forests and natural ecosystems, reducing fertilizer use, afforestation, and production of biofuels (IPCC, 2022). These mitigation efforts can limit farmers’ options for agricultural production and decrease their incomes (Hasegawa et al., 2018). Thus, climate change, as well as the very actions to mitigate it, risk further increasing inequalities, poverty and food insecurity.
Social protection enables small-scale farmers to invest in new technologies, diversify incomes, adopt new farming assets and accumulate savings, to better adapt to climate change. Research shows that by providing rural people with predictable and stable income, social protection can reduce barriers to climate change adaptation and make rural communities more resilient to future climate shocks. This occurs through various channels.
Evidence shows that social protection programs support rural people in purchasing new technologies and inputs, such as improved seeds. In Zambia, for example, cash transfers increased spending on agricultural inputs by beneficiaries by 242 percent (Handa et al 2018). Similarly, in Lesotho cash transfers increased seed and fertilizer expenditures by 70 and 86 percent respectively (Daidone et al. 2021).
It is critical to diversify sources of incomes since this can help stabilize incomes and consumption in times of weather shocks. This is particularly important for weather dependent small-scale farmers. In Zambia and Malawi, the Child Grant model and Social Cash Transfer Program beneficiaries increased participation in non-farm business by 17 and 12 percentage points respectively (Handa et al. 2018; de Hoop et al. 2020). In Ethiopia, beneficiaries of the Productive Safety Net Program are 6.7 percentage points more likely to operate…
Read More: Should climate funds be used for social security? – World