Highlights: 

This paper reviews the available evidence on the role of social protection programmes in facilitating climate- change adaptation and mitigation, with a specific emphasis on economic inclusion for agriculture- dependent households. 

The available evidence for social protection programmes facilitating climate adaptation is categorized across three outputs: (1) adoption of climate-adaptive agricultural practices; (2) diversification of income sources, both on and off farm, to those that are less sensitive to climate variability; and (3) natural-resource management and ecosystem restoration. 

Table 3 summarizes the results of the evidence review with respect to the outcome categories.

These findings underline the importance of adopting a systems approach. The livelihoods of marginalized communities are inherently climate sensitive. While social protection programmes can foster economic inclusion by bolstering their capacity to adopt climate-resilient livelihoods, they do not automatically translate into enhanced adaptive capacity (Agrawal et al., 2020). To achieve this, it is important to link social protection programmes, climate action programmes and livelihood programmes. Macroeconomic labour and trade policies are essential in creating non-farm opportunities, without which diversification of livelihoods is hindered. In addition, it is crucial to address power imbalances and structural inequalities, including access to productive resources such as land, water and technology, access to essential services such as roads and markets and the availability of decent work opportunities. Solorzano (2016, p. 35) cautions that, without an inclusive systems approach, “diversification can lead to the atomization of livelihoods into small activities with very low productivity.”