The Government of Zambia (GoZ) and the UK Institute of Development Studies (IDS) organised a Solutions Session at this Summit which took place last week. It was designed to bring closer together the poverty reduction and climate resilience discourses and practical actions.
The event was packed with substantial analysis and recommendations illustrated by great examples. My focus today is on the more practical actions governments and others can take. Thinking of the recently concluded COP in Brazil, this has agreed some additional (?) adaptation funding, so this topic is of potential interest in joining together the social development and climate discourses and communities.
Foundations for growth: Zambia’s social protection priorities
Zambia’s Minister for Community Development and Social Services (MCDSS), the Honourable Doreen Sefuke Mwamba emphasised the expansion of social protection, the provision of business skills and development of climate smart agriculture as the foundations for inclusive growth, or growth from below, and Zambia’s willingness to champion this agenda globally.
Building resilience at lower welfare levels
Vidya Diwakar (IDS) reported that resilience to climate and other hazards (the ability to bounce back or recover from a shock) is generally achieved at relatively high levels of welfare; the question for us all is how can that resilience be strengthened at lower levels of welfare – for the poor and vulnerable nonpoor.
She emphasised the importance of layered interventions building on social cash transfers to support people out of poverty, and the need to prevent impoverishment through insurance and macro-economic management. In Zambia, however, mobilising insurance companies and international risk management institutions for preventive actions is at an early stage.
Poverty, vulnerability and the World Social Report 2025
The need to prevent impoverishment was reemphasised by Fernanda Pavez Esbry (UNDESA) who reported on the World Social Report 2025, which highlighted the many people falling temporarily into poverty in an insecure world where people struggle to achieve and hope, and where minor setbacks can impoverish.
3 billion people are in the category of vulnerable non-poor, when poverty is measured at the U.S.$ 3 per person per day level. Many of these live in fragile and conflict affected situations, where achieving sustained peace should be part of any initiative to end poverty or build resilience.
The World Social Report brought to the table by Fernanda Pavez Esbry (UNDESA) emphasised governance (capacity, financing, social cohesion and trust) and institutional development as important parts of the poverty and vulnerability reduction story – something reaffirmed in several other presentations. For example, the MCDSS Permanent Secretary (PS) focused on building co-ordinated cross-sectoral and cross-ministerial solutions as a consequence of adopting a cash + approach as well as the operational challenges faced in strengthening the institutional foundations for expanded social protection.
These are partly met through south-south learning, with a team from MCDSS visiting Rwanda this week to benchmark its single social registry which supports the government’s anti-poverty programming there. The PS also mentioned the important fiscal constraint Zambia currently faces: government’s choices are fiscally constrained and need to be carefully weighed. The Ministry has developed but not yet implemented a financing sustainability strategy.
Anticipatory action and local systems
Building climate resilience for those at the bottom of the income distribution depends on the layering of measures to enable people to escape poverty; and then on a raft of complementary measures: in particular, according to Adiya Bahadur, Director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, anticipatory actions especially early warning systems to protect lives and food security, and expanded support for people’s strategies to remain out of poverty.
Knowing where the hotspots of climate-related shocks and extreme poverty are located would then help pre-position assets and resources to assist preventive action. Resilient health systems including mental health services are also a central aspect of keeping people out of poverty, a fact acknowledged by the Government of Zambia’s linking of health insurance to social cash transfers.
Lessons from Rwanda and beyond
Climate and other risks can be cross-border, and so regional co-ordination so that neighbouring countries responses are coherent and mutually supportive are an essential part of anticipatory actions, according to Cleopas Sambo at the University of Zambia. Institutional co-ordination more broadly is a condition for simultaneous work on poverty reduction and climate resilience.
An example of this, according to Jules Rutebuka was the establishment of the Rwanda Green Fund (FONERWA) since 2012, which had coordinated national green investments in Rwanda to support implementing agencies including the decentralised entities (Districts).
The districts had set up a financing approach which linked the environmental conservation interventions with Rwanda’s Vision Umurenge Programme (VUP) (public works and cash transfers) for generating incomes to poor people and job creation.
People’s voices, co-creation and locally led solutions
Cleopas Sambo from University of Zambia, Jules Rutebuka from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), based in Kigali and Alice Menya from the Nuvoni Centre for Innovation Research (Nairobi) all emphased the importance of bringing poor and vulnerable people’s voices to the table to co-create solutions which will work.
Governments need to think less about getting back into power (the ‘choiceless democracy’ concept of Thanda Mkandawire) and listen more to the people they are meant to serve. Co-creation involves the merging of people’s knowledge with science.
Rwanda provided an example of including people’s voices into village Land Use and Action Plans (VLUAP) for landscape management, which was accompanied by strengthening Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs). It also acknowledges the importance of scaling down and varying actions to take account of social and ecological niches. Thus, “Where we, the people, shape the land and the land shapes us and it lies in the vital nexus between people and nature,” said Jules Rutebuka.
Urban poverty and transformative partnerships
Alice Menya complemented the strong rural focus with a call for transformative partnerships, for example, between central and local government, the private sector, civil society organisations, local actors, and researchers to develop localised, multi-sector solutions in urban spaces, to increasing the productivity of the millions of informal enterprises through training, safety nets, financial services and improved work environments.
Where there is a potential for ‘green jobs’, localised climate finance on the model of Kenya’s FLLoCA – Financing Locally Led Climate Action programme is capable of reaching people, unlike much of the more centralised climate finance.
Conclusion
Achieving poverty reduction and climate resilience simultaneously will become an important priority for governments and other actors, as climate change is increasingly an obstacle to poverty reduction, and resilience cannot be achieved without poverty reduction, as mentioned by Aditya Bahadur. A worthy focus for climate adaptation funding.
