To strengthen climate resilience, focus on social protection
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How do we prevent the climate crisis from reversing decades of progress on poverty reduction? In our view, there are two imperatives. First, we must keep the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach. That means we cannot afford to move at the pace of the most recalcitrant negotiators. Thus, Brazil has called for multilateral coalitions willing to work at the speed and scale required to accelerate the transition to net-zero carbon emissions.
Second, we must empower poor people to adapt to a crisis they played no part in creating. Here, too, speed and scale are critical. At last year’s COP30 in Brazil, governments recognized that their national adaptation plans should be embedded within their development strategies. Overwhelmingly financed from national budgets, these plans present an opportunity to integrate climate adaptation with poverty reduction. Rich countries have now pledged to triple adaptation finance from the admittedly low current annual level of $40 billion.
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Kenya’s Hunger Safety Net Programme provides regular support to about 800,000 people, but that number rises to around 4.5 million during droughts. Similar programs in Somalia, Ethiopia and countries across the Sahel demonstrate that effective safety nets can be created even when governments have limited capacity and are mired in armed conflict.
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Brazil’s experience is instructive. Under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, social protection has played a central role not only in cutting poverty and combating hunger, but also in adapting to climate change. Efforts have been made to export this model through the creation of a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, which was established under Brazil’s G20 presidency. This international platform could enable donors, multilateral development banks and UN agencies to pool their resources and channel them through national social-protection systems that respond to climate risks. As an ODI Global report argues, such an approach would help prevent duplication, lower transaction costs and reduce inefficiencies.
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