Adaptive social protection (ASP) measures include climate and disaster-related social transfers, cash transfer programming and broader social security intervention anticipating shocks from extreme weather events due to the effect of climate change and increasing disaster risks. Existing literature tends to view ASP as experimental and highly formal as it relies on interventions from governments and to some echoed and advocated by international organisations and donors.as well as NGOs. There is less exploration around protection from local communities and institutions.
This paper hypothesis that understanding informal social protection is key to building adaptive capacity. It examines informal social protection (ISP) arrangements in the context of adaptive climate protection and how ISP arrangements can create pathways towards (1) adaptive social protection and (2) how formal and informal social protection can avoid mutually exclusive scenarios. This paper utilises data from both quantitative and qualitative approaches, including at least a survey with 300 respondents, key informant interviews with 23 respondents, a transdisciplinary workshop with 26 participants, and household interviews with participant observations in 17 families at the grassroot levels.
The findings suggest that despite imperfect, informal social protection arrangements can be a reliable measure to complement formal social protection in general. This paper identifies 36 types of 36 ISP arrangements. Two out of 36 of these informal arrangements have inclusive dimensions that can be used to inform formal ASP. Faith-based organisations and local organisations, such as NGOs and cooperatives, have the most promising pathways of building transformative impacts that would open ways to create a more adaptive community. Furthermore, there are gaps and areas of improvement of ISP arrangements that complement the roles of the governments in addressing the issues of poverty, vulnerability and marginalisation. We argue that ISP shares the basic features of community-based initiatives and adaption.
