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Fostering coherence between social protection, agriculture and natural resource management for an inclusive and sustainable recovery

Gala Dahlet's picture
Submitted by Gala Dahlet
on Sat, 01/05/2021 - 17:06
This blog post was written by Gala Dahlet and Ana Ocampo The COVID-19 pandemic has developed into a health, economic and social crisis, threatening decades of progress in poverty reduction for the first time (World Bank, 2020) and significantly increasing food insecurity (IFPRI, 2020), adding to the impacts of conflicts and climate change. These complex and overlapping issues call for coherent approaches. Successes and challenges of the COVID-19 response in rural areas About 80 per cent of the extreme poor live in rural areas and experience more overlapping deprivations in accessing services and infrastructure than their urban counterparts, as well as lower access to social protection and economic opportunities (Castañeda et al, 2018; FAO, 2019). They...Read more

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Linking social protection, agriculture and food security and nutrition: diversifying production and diets

Jessica Owens's picture
Submitted by Jessica Owens
on Mon, 11/01/2021 - 13:05
Written by Mari Kangasniemi, Social Protection Officer at FAO, and Jessica Owens, Social Protection Consultant at FAO. Siloed interventions often fail to address the complex needs of poor rural households. The webinar held on 15 October, 'Linking social protection, agriculture and food security and nutrition: diversifying production and diets' focused on how the coherent integration of services from social protection, agriculture and nutrition sectors can support greater impacts on improving nutrition outcomes for this population. The session, which was organised by FAO, presented a review of five country Cash+ experiences in linking nutrition-sensitive social protection and agriculture to support improved food security and nutrition with a special focus on healthy diets. The...Read more

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Expanding Social Protection to Decrease Inequality

Ulrika Lång's picture
Submitted by Ulrika Lång
on Tue, 29/12/2020 - 14:44
Covid-19 has been called a “game changer” for social protection, an alarm bell for expansion. We don’t yet know the full effects of this crisis, but we already know that inequalities are increasing both within countries and between countries. Tackling inequality will demand even larger efforts than before. To make this leap we need to recognize that social protection is an investment. Social protection as an investment While expansion of social protection has been placed high on the development agenda to meet the effects of COVID-19, actual investments are larger in high-income countries. During the last decade, social protection coverage has increased rapidly. Still, 80 per cent of the poorest in low-income countries lack access to social safety nets,...Read more

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Weekly Social Protection Links: 23 December 2020

Ugo Gentilini's picture
Submitted by Ugo Gentilini
on Mon, 28/12/2020 - 13:07
Social protection provisions by the state don’t occur in a vacuum! Evans et al have a fascinating and much-needed ODI paper estimating the magnitude and incidence of ‘informal’ taxes and transfers , i.e., community and household-level support mechanisms occurring outside the realm of market transactions. By adapting the CEQ framework, they show that the scale of informal support is significant – that is, domestic forms of informal mechanisms (excluding remittances) are present among 24.1% of households across 99 countries. And in Rwanda, over 95% of households give and receive informal transfers. Transfers are also significant in amount, or representing 21.4% of households’ welfare. Bottom line: state-provided social protection could more fully recognize, strengthen and...Read more

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Donor perspectives: What is the potential for forging stronger links between humanitarian CVA and social protection in light of COVID-19 and how can this be financed?

Enkhzul Altangerel's picture
Submitted by Enkhzul Altangerel
on Tue, 22/12/2020 - 20:15
In order to address the wide range of needs emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic, and particularly those of a socio-economic nature, the use of cash has been the response of choice for many governments, expanding their systems (for social assistance, public works, unemployment, pension schemes, etc). The same is true for humanitarian actors (unconditional cash, cash for work, cash+, enhanced minimum expenditure baskets). On 19 November 2020 the Grand Bargain sub-group on linking humanitarian cash transfers (HCT) and social protection (SP) organised the webinar "Donor perspectives: What is the potential for forging stronger links between humanitarian CVA and social protection in light of COVID-19 and how can this be financed?" to provide donor perspectives on forging stronger links between...Read more

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