The negative impacts of disasters and climate change are increasingly threatening the lives and livelihoods of the world’s poor and disaster-vulnerable populations, resulting in millions either being trapped or falling back into poverty. Social protection (SP) systems have an important role in helping individuals and societies manage risk and volatility and protect them from poverty and destitution—through instruments that improve resilience, equity, and opportunity. However, traditional SP systems often cannot cover the economic and social costs brought on by compound shocks. SP programs should be responsive and adaptive to be rapidly scaled-up and be capable of increasing support to existing beneficiaries and other affected non-beneficiaries after a shock. ASP considers how SP programs, services and systems can contribute to addressing compound shocks through preventive, preparedness, and response actions, adapting, and using the capacity of the SP sector, typically developed for addressing individual shocks, to enhance the resilience of households, particularly for the poor.
This session will present, through a panel discussion, various examples of how governments are implementing ASP systems to more effectively supports households and individuals to adapt, prepare for, cope with, and recover from the impact of disaster-related shocks.
