Climate resilience through social protection: the economic case for early action

This paper highlights two complementary pathways for building resilience in response to climate change: anticipatory direct benefit transfers and longer-term resilience-building investments, and presents the business case for these approaches - including benefit-cost ratios and return on investment - compared with existing social protection and humanitarian responses. The findings are based on analysis from eight countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, Pakistan, Senegal and Uganda.

The ASPIRE (Anticipatory Social Protection Index for Resilience) assessment across the eight countries shows that early action, through social protection programmes, is cost-effective and socially transformative. Therefore, the authors show that these findings make a strong case for shifting from reactive, post-disaster responses to proactive systems that act before losses escalate.