Climate Change and Social Protection (CCASP) Research Initiative

The Climate Change and Social Protection (CCASP) Research Initiative was founded to support a major shift in the ambition, vision, and urgency in social protection and climate policies and programmes in the Global South to address the large-scale socio economic challenges that climate change is likely to induce in the medium term.

It aims to do this by:

  • exploring the implications of climate change for social protection needs;
  • identifying ways for social protection to contribute to managing climate change;
  • creating a knowledge base of effective policy and programme options on social protection and climate change;
  • creating synergies and learning between the climate change and social protection communities;
  • and  highlighting the ways that the sector will need to adapt to respond to the changes in the patterns of poverty that climate change will bring about. 

Overall CCASP aims to improve our understanding of the social protection and climate change intersection, and strategically consolidate learning to inform and stimulate the expansion of social protection systems that can protect populations from the worst impacts of climate change, globally.

Over the last two years CCASP has been working on these issues with:

  • DFAT
  • FCDO
  • EC
  • KfW
  • FAO
  • ILO

CCASP has recently completed work with DFAT on the implications of climate change for social protection in the Asia Pacific region, including on a mapping of social protection programmes addressing climate change in the Asia Pacific Region, (Rethinking Social Protection and Climate Change, The medium-term implications of climate change for social protection policy and programming in the Asia-Pacific region, Costella and McCord, 2023), and current projects include a collaborative process with climate and social protection scholars to consider the key areas where existing social protection orthodoxies are challenged and will need to be revisited to address future climate challenges, and work with the FAO to explore the implications for social protection of the limits to adaptation.  Both are due to be published in the coming months – watch this space.

CCASP was founded in 2022 and is led by Anna McCord.