Integrating seasonal climate forecasts into adaptive social protection in the Sahel

Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) aims to combine climate adaptation, disaster resilience and social protection measures into one integrated system. Doing so allows for the planning of timely, coherent responses to climate and other shocks before they happen, while also encouraging measures to increase baseline resilience to such shocks. 

The ASPIRE project aimed to investigate how climate forecasts could be used to inform ASP decisions and resilience measures. The team’s new paper in Climate and Development highlights the challenges and opportunities of incorporating seasonal climate forecasts into the World Bank’s Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program. The paper, entitled ‘Integrating seasonal climate forecasts into adaptive social protection in the Sahel’, details key findings and recommendations, including the requirement for enhanced dialogue between social protection and climate stakeholders, the need to better understand the impacts of climate on livelihoods and the importance of adapting and tailoring climate forecasts to the specific needs of ASP programmes.

“Adaptive Social Protection has the potential to support and save the lives of many of the world’s most vulnerable but ensuring that these interventions are tailored to individual needs is fundamental to their success,” explained Luisa Ciampi, co-author of the paper Impact Analyst at the Walker Institute. “Based on the work of the ASPIRE project, this paper presents several key aspects of the process that must be improved, including effective, cross-sector integration of climate science and livelihoods information in policy action to ensure effective and timely triggering of targeted social protection systems. The Walker Institute draws on such interdisciplinary research in many of its other projects to support the process of tailored, relevant and timely climate information service delivery, which can save lives.”

The full paper is available on the Climate and Development website.