Building Resilience through Adaptive Social Protection

The South-South Learning Forum (SSLF) is the flagship event of the World Bank Group's Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice. Since its launch, the event has brought together more than 1,300 policy makers and practitioners from more than 100 developing countries to share and advance global knowledge and practice on social protection. The Forum was held from February 19-22 at the InterContinental Hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. This Forum was attended by more than 250 people from more than 68 countries. Post-Forum evaluations reveal that 97% of participants were satisfied or highly satisfied with the event (please see Annex 2 for more details on the evaluation).

The SSLF 2018 focused on the topic of “building household resilience through Adaptive Social Protection.” The concept of “Adaptive” Social Protection (ASP) has emerged in recent years, which places an enhanced focus on better enabling social protection to address the impacts of all manner of shocks on the households they affect – including natural disasters and climate change, economic and financial crises, conflict and displacement, among others. A nascent area, ASP has begun to crystalize around two interrelated approaches: 1) building the resilience of the households that are most vulnerable to shocks; 2) increasing the responsiveness of social protection programs to adapt to and meet changed needs on the ground after shocks have materialized.

This summary report briefly outlines the information presented at the Forum, the main takeaways that emerged from the discussions and the questions for further engagement and research going forward. Concretely, the information and cases presented at the Forum will form the basis for a forthcoming publication on Adaptive Social Protection that is scheduled for publication in 2019.