Strengthening Climate Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction: Case Study of the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection

Abstract

Climate change has emerged in the recent times as, perhaps, the most challenging development issue that poses an existential threat to both humanity and ecosystems. The manifestation of climate change and variability includes rising atmospheric temperatures, erratic rainfall patterns, rising sea levels, accompanied by the extreme weather events. Spawned largely by anthropogenic forces, comprising, among other things, demographic explosion, rapid urbanization, deforestation, over-grazing, agricultural intensification and extensification; the distribution of climate change impacts are rather uneven across the world. While Africa contributes the least emissions of carbon compounds blamed for global warming; the region has suffered some of the most severe impacts of the phenomenon. Over the past several decades, the global climate change has unleashed natural disasters around the world, triggering considerable loss and damage to people’s lives and property. It has also fueled humanitarian crises, particularly in developing countries, which depend largely on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods. Crop failure, often associated with drought, and driven by climate variability, has devastated several low-income countries, with grave implications for food and nutrition insecurity. Increasing hazards, associated with the global climate change spurred the international development community to establish Disaster Risk Reduction frameworks as instruments to tackle climate-related risks and foster resilience, particularly among the poor and vulnerable segments of the population in the most affected countries around the world. Consequently, the World Bank, in 2014, established the Adapted Social Protection Program (ASPP) in the Sahel, covering Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. With donor funding, the World Bank has supported the six countries with US75 million for the initiative, comprising cash transfers, as well as cash-for-work projects. In a progress report on the ASPP in 2017, the World Bank reveals the considerable success associated with the initiative, which drives the innovative social protection systems in the Sahel along a path of resilience, improved livelihoods and prosperity among the poorest and most vulnerable elements of the population.