On June 5th, Development Pathways helped organise a British Expertise International webinar on the ‘Intersection of Climate Change and Social Security’.
Stephen Kidd, Principal Social Security Specialist at Development Pathways, alongside Anna McCord, Lead of the Climate Change and Social Protection Research Initiative, Chad Anderson from CoWater International and Katherine Cooke from Oxford Policy Management, delivered a sobering assessment of social protection’s future in a world undergoing climate change. Their examination of the critical role of social security systems in addressing climate vulnerabilities painted a stark picture: by 2030, an estimated 130 million additional people could plunge into extreme poverty due to climate change alone.
Anna introduced the grim reality that underlined the discussion. Internal displacement due to climate change could affect 100 million people in Africa by 2050, with a total of 200 million displaced globally. Global damages to farming infrastructure, productivity and health could amount to 38 trillion USD per year by 2050. Perhaps most alarming of all, the global economy faces losing 50 per cent of its GDP between 2070 and 2090 due to climate shocks.
Behind these figures lies a more immediate crisis: the inadequacy of our current social protection systems to handle what is coming and what is already happening. In the 20 most climate-vulnerable countries, 91 per cent of people lack access to any social protection scheme. When climate disasters strike, families resort to devastating coping mechanisms – selling productive assets and reducing food consumption, with children bearing the brunt as they are biologically the most vulnerable to malnutrition.
Despite these challenges, each speaker offered some potential solutions. Chad presented the case of Rwanda, where a one-off shock response payment of 150 USD would cost 1.3 per cent of GDP without reducing poverty. The same budget could instead provide 8.50 USD per month to all children aged 0-2, reducing poverty by 11 per cent and boosting aggregate demand. This could make the difference between providing short-term relief and building longer-term resilience.
Katherine’s presentation revealed a fundamental misalignment: current climate adaptation initiatives are often project-based, short-term and donor-led, disconnected from national climate strategies. Meanwhile, social protection systems remain trapped in poverty-targeting approaches that miss those who need the most help.
The solution, as Katherine and Stephen pointed out, requires nothing short of a paradigm shift. Countries need comprehensive social security systems with universal coverage, moving away from schemes that force people to prove their poverty through complex, dignity-stripping bureaucratic processes. Stephen proposed implementing programmes such as emergency child benefits, universal old-age pensions and systems that can scale up rapidly when disasters strike.
The key takeaway from this event was that climate resilience is not about incremental change anymore. Climate change is reshaping vulnerability itself, and our social protection systems must evolve accordingly – or risk leaving hundreds of millions behind in an increasingly unstable world.
The question is not whether we can afford to build these systems. It’s whether we can afford not to.