Climate and Economic Inclusion

We provide expertise on how Social Protection can reduce vulnerability to climate change, promote adaptation and mitigation, and ensure inclusive economic transformation.

Vegetable vendor in Myanmar

Climate change could push more than 720 million people back into poverty by 2050. It may also force 140 million people to become climate refugees. This threat is particularly urgent in Africa south of the Sahara desert, and in South Asia, where the effects of climate change are expected to be most severe, deepening existing inequalities.  

Our work on climate and economic inclusion is growing, with a focus on:

  • Supporting adaptive social assistance programmes to enhance household resilience to climate change through using cash transfers and cash+ approaches to promote economic empowerment and climate smart agriculture and sustainable food systems, and to enable ecosystem-based adaptation.  
  • Integrating social protection into national climate action plans and reinforcing key operational systems such as national ID frameworks, social registries, and payment systems, to enable more equitable and effective responses to climate change.
  • Supporting programmes that facilitate green graduation, offering skills that enable vulnerable small-scale producers to transition to sustainable livelihoods that have a lighter footprint on the environment.  
  • Strengthening the links between climate finance and social protection, through engaging with climate finance institutions.​ 

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