Joint GIZ-DIE event starting with a keynote by Martina Ulrichs. Background: In the past five decades, drought has become a major problem in Africa. It has caused depletion of assets, environmental degradation, impoverishment, unemployment and forced migrations, thus threatening to undermine the development gains made. Especially in the drylands drought represents one of the most important factors contributing to malnutrition and famine that affects the poorest and most vulnerable communities. Climate shocks force poor households to liquidate productive assets such as livestock or land in exchange for food, default on loans, withdraw children from school, and/or engage in exploitive environmental management practices to survive. Furthermore, the lingering risk of drought weakens the ex-post adaptation options as it prevents farmers from adopting profitable technologies and practices that are perceived as risky, hence creating a nexus that increases the cycle of vulnerability and depletes the capability to overcome hunger and poverty. This inability to accept and manage risk and accumulate and retain wealth locks vulnerable populations in poverty and food and nutrition insecurity. During the last decade, social protection instruments have gained popularity among policy responses to drought. An increasing number of governments in Sub-Saharan Africa have integrated cash transfer and public works schemes into their strategies for food and nutrition security and disaster risk management. These programmes shall prevent disinvestment and depletion of assets and enhance post-drought recovery, adaptation and resilience of livelihoods for the poorest parts of the population in affected areas. Most prominent examples are Ethiopia with its Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), the largest safety net in Africa, outside South Africa, or the Kenya´s Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP). But can social protection programmes factually deliver the promises made? Panellists: Martina Ulrichs (Independent consultant) Ralf Radermacher (GIZ) Guush Berhane (IFPRI) Bettina Tewinkel (KfW) Moderators: Markus Loewe (DIE) The event is part of a series: Research meets Development: Drought resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa Event series in the context of the “One World – No Hunger” (SEWOH) initiative of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in the summer term 2017 More on the series at: https://www.die-gdi.de/veranstaltungen/drought-resilience-in-sub-saharan-africa/

1. Social Protection –
A main Pillar in Drought
Resilience?
Martina Ulrichs

2. Overview
 Drought, Social Protection and Resilience
 Findings from BRACED research programme
on social protection and resilience capacities
 Three reflections moving forward

3. Drought in East Africa
• 2015-2017 consecutive years of
drought has led to food and
water shortage
•10.7 million people in Ethiopia,
Kenya and Somalia in need of
food assistance (ECHO 2017)
• Increasing urgency to support
vulnerable people in building
resilience to drought
.
“Ukame” is drought in Swahili. Participatory risk ranking in Turkana.
Credit: Martina Ulrichs

4. Social Protection
• SP aims to reduce vulnerability to risks through
cash- or in-kind support
• Different SP programmes have different forms
and functions:
• Form:
• Cash transfers
• Public works
• Function:
• Prevent intergenerational transmission
of poverty (CCT)
• Provide protection in old age
(pensions)
• Increase food security (safety nets)

5. BRACED Resilience
framework
Absorptive capacity
 Anticipatory capacity
 Adaptive capacity
(Bahadur et al. 2015)
Turkana women
Credit: Martina Ulrichs

6. Absorptive capacity
Credit: Bioversity International / E.Hermanowicz
Regular income transfers allow people to
absorb shocks.
Ethiopia PSNP: welfare of households
receiving support drops less after drought
and recovers faster
 Uganda Pension: similar impact on
capacity to absorb, despite different function

7. Anticipatory capacity
HSNP beneficiary, Turkana
Credit: Martina Ulrichs
SP can increase anticipatory capacity at two
levels:
Household / individual
 Savings, investing in assets
Institutional
 Putting in place systems to ‘scale-up’ support
during an emergency

8. Adaptive capacity
WFP Public Works Programme in Lesotho
Credit: Martina Ulrichs
SP’s contribution to adaptive capacity less
clear - but important to build resilience.
 Limited evidence of impact of assets on
adaptive capacity
 Complementary programmes needed
Ethiopia: PSNP and HABP

9. Three reflections

10. 1. What is SP’s main contribution to resilience?
Auxiliary outcomes
Environmental outcomes
Intrinsic outcomes
Household/individual
Auxiliary outcomes
Institutional / systems
Absorptive
Increasing the environment’s capacity
to absorb through public works e.g. soil
and water conservation activities.
Cash transfers allow people to meet basic
consumption needs during times of shocks.
Putting in place effective delivery
mechanisms that can deliver assistance
even during times of crisis.
Anticipatory
Increasing preparedness by supporting
infrastructure to reduce disasters, e.g.
building flood walls.
Cash transfers provide people with the ability to
save in anticipation of a shock.
Putting in place delivery mechanisms,
contingency plans to deliver emergency
assistance through social protection.
Adaptive (social protection +)
Promoting adaptation through
reforestation, conservation farming.
Enabling households to improve their livelihoods
through asset-building and income generation
activities that are less vulnerable to climate risks.
Providing linkages between social
protection and other livelihoods
programmes.
Source: Ulrichs and Slater, 2016

11. 2. Isomorphic mimicry – is it form or function that matters for
resilience?
In SP you observe two things:
•Programmes that look the same on
paper, but perfom differently
•Programmes that have different functions
but similar forms (e.g. cash transfers)

12. 3. Premature load bearing and institutional capacity
‘Asking
too much
of too
little too
soon too
often’
Credit: Rachel Slater
 Expectation of social protection are high and
don’t always match capacity to deliver.
 Putting in place functioning programmes takes
time, e.g. PSNP Ethiopia.

13. Conclusions
 Social protection’s key contribution to resilience is to reduce
negative impact of shocks – this needs to be strengthened.
 Social protection can be a vehicle for effective humanitarian
assistance in certain contexts – but a focus on ‘shock-
response’ should not bring us back to short-term assistance.
 Building resilience is complex and cannot be achieved by one
programme alone – we need to understand the comparative
advantage of different sectors in a wider resilience building
agenda.

14. Thank you
Contact:
Martina.Ulrichs@gmail.com
This research formed part the Building
Resilience and Adaptation to Climate
Extremes and Disasters (BRACED)
programme.
http://www.braced.org/