Enhancing the resilience and well‐being of rural poor to climate risks: are the economic functions of social protection enough?

Abstract

As climate change accelerates, adaptive social protection programmes are becoming increasingly more popular than conventional social assistance programmes, since they are seen to enhance people's resilience and well-being outcomes. Despite this upsurge, little is known about the impacts of adaptive programmes on resilience and well-being outcomes as compared to conventional programmes. This paper examines the economic functions that both types of social protection programmes offer through empirical studies in two climate-vulnerable zones in Bangladesh. By operationalising a simplified analytical framework to comprehend subjective resilience, the qualitative data reveal that the adaptive programme is more effective in enhancing beneficiaries' perceived resilience to climate risks. Regrettably, neither programme is found to contribute much significantly in terms of enabling beneficiaries to achieve the desired well-being outcomes that one might expect to see. The paper offers rich insights into the design components of the programmes, affording an on-the-ground understanding of their implications for resilience and well-being.

Mental health and wellbeing outcomes of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies: a systematic review

“…The Sample sizes of the included studies varied between 48 and 4000, and their designs were heterogeneous. Three (20%) were randomised clinical trials (RCTs) [53][54][55], four (26.7%) were randomised evaluations of interventions [56][57][58][59], four (26.7%) were quasi-experimental studies [60][61][62][63], two (13.3%) were qualitative evaluations of interventions [28,64], and the remaining two (13.3%) were field experimental studies [65,66]. The most common regions where the studies occurred were South America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa (figure 2).…”

“…Of the included studies, two (13.3%) targeted specific population groups (e.g. pregnant women [53], older adults [66]) in urban areas, and the other thirteen (86.7%) were population-based studies [28,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] in rural areas considered at high-risk for environmental hazards. Two studies [53,55] had all-female samples, one had an all-male sample [66], and two [28,64] reported gender-disaggregated data in the qualitative analysis.…”

“…pregnant women [53], older adults [66]) in urban areas, and the other thirteen (86.7%) were population-based studies [28,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] in rural areas considered at high-risk for environmental hazards. Two studies [53,55] had all-female samples, one had an all-male sample [66], and two [28,64] reported gender-disaggregated data in the qualitative analysis. The remaining ten studies [54,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] did not report data differentiated by sex or gender, although some mentioned females were a significant component of their samples.…”

“…Studies investigated seven loose groups of environmental threats: three studies (20%) assessed air pollution [53,55,66], two (13.3%) evaluated droughts and food insecurity [56,60], four (26.7%) investigated extreme weather events such as floods and storms [54,[63][64][65], three (20%) evaluated deforestation [58,59,62], one (6.7%) focused on the sea-level rise [28], one (6.7%) explored biodiversity protection [57], and the last one (6.7%) assessed access to safe water [61]. Details of the included studies, intervention design and their effectiveness are included in tables 2 and 3.…”

Building rural community disaster resilience in developing countries: insights from a Chinese NGO's Safe Rural Community programme

“…Rural communities in most developing countries are generally more vulnerable than urban communities to natural hazards because of social disadvantage, increased natural environment vulnerabilities (Wang et al, 2017), lower education levels, and poor basic knowledge of local hazards and disaster risk reduction (DRR) (Baudoin et al, 2016). Climate change, population growth, rapid urbanisation, and other unsustainable development trends have also exacerbated the frequency and vulnerability of natural hazards, especially in rural areas of developing countries (Paterson and Charles, 2019; Kundo et al, 2023). The recent COVID‐19 pandemic, for instance, resulted in overwhelming challenges in developing countries, which again underscored the importance of rural CDR (Ahmad et al, 2022; Bwerinofa et al, 2022).…”