Resilience has become prominent in academia where it is used as a central framework in disciplines such as ecology, climate change adaptation or urban planning. Policy makers and international development agencies also increasingly refer to it. The objective of this paper is to assess the advantages and limits of resilience in the context of development. Although the review highlights some positive elements—for example, the ability to foster an integrated approach—it also shows that resilience has important limitations. In particular, it is not a pro‐poor concept, in the sense that it does not exclusively apply to, or benefit, the poor. As such, resilience building cannot replace poverty reduction. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article analyses the role of social protection programmes in contributing to people's resilience to climate risks. Drawing from desk‐based and empirical studies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, it finds that social transfers make a strong contribution to the capacity of individuals and households to absorb the negative impacts of climate‐related shocks and stresses. They do so through the provision of reliable, national social safety net systems—even when these are not specifically designed to address climate risks. Social protection can also increase the anticipatory capacity of national disaster response systems through scalability mechanisms, or pre‐emptively through linkages to early action and early warning mechanisms. Critical knowledge gaps remain in terms of programmes’ contributions to the adaptive capacity required for long‐term resilience. The findings offer insights beyond social protection on the importance of robust, national administrative systems as a key foundation to support people's resilience to climate risks.

The current refugee crisis requires new thinking and durable policies which move beyond simply meeting the short‐term immediate needs of refugees. In the context of this protracted crisis, the humanitarian response has included a focus on cash transfer programming as a way to support Syrian refugees in Jordan to meet their basic needs. While evidence on cash transfers in stable contexts has been well‐documented over the last two decades, little is known about the potential effects of cash transfers on populations in protracted displacement. This article examines the economic and social effects of a UNHCR cash transfer programme for Syrian refugees in urban areas in Jordan. We find that almost all beneficiaries used the transfer to pay rent, and that this reduces stress and anxiety among beneficiaries. These effects are important, but depend on the continuation of cash transfer support. For longer‐term impacts, assistance for refugees needs to move beyond short‐term support and align better with national interventions and a broader enabling policy environment, including refugees' right to work.

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