Climate change and food security: risks and responses

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Mobilize social protection to increase resilience of livelihoods in the face of
climate change
A major and urgent area for intervention is increasing the resilience (and thus reducing the 
vulnerability) of livelihoods, particularly among the poor who are highly dependent on natural 
resources and exposed to climate risks 
Social protection programmes
are essential in this effort, with proven effectiveness in 
breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and hunger. Social protection covers a wide array of 
instruments and objectives, encompassing both safety nets and “safety ropes”, i.e., mechanisms 
that enhance income-generating abilities and opportunities for the poor and vulnerable. 
Adequate, well-designed social protection would tackle some of the main vulnerabilities 
of households to climate risks. Income provided to the poor and hungry through social 
protection can enable them to access sufficient food to meet their basic nourishment needs, 
without compromising the future productivity of their livelihoods. Such actions will be 
particularly efficient if targeted to the needs of women.
In a recently released report, FAO, IFAD and WFP showed that it would be possible to 
end extreme poverty and hunger by 2030, by combining public investment in social protection 
with public and private efforts to raise investment levels in productive sectors, – especially in 
rural areas and particularly in agriculture sustaining pro-poor and gender-inclusive growth. 
The overall required effort would amount to an estimated average of USD267 billion per 
year during 2016–2030. Climate change makes these investments even more necessary. It 
also challenges the long-term realization of the objective of eradicating hunger, requiring the 
maintenance of significant safety nets and safety ropes, as well as additional investments to 
cope with additional risks. 
These actions will need to be supplemented by