Joint Guidance Note “Scaling social protection for climate action”: crucial for combating climate change
The climate is changing, and with it, the risks to human life and well-being are growing. According to the Climate Risk Index 2026, more than 832,000 people have died in the past three decades as a direct result of climate-related impacts, while over 9,700 extreme weather events since 1995 have caused economic losses of 4.5 trillion USD. These impacts fall disproportionately on those who are already poor and vulnerable – reinforcing cycles of inequality and exposure to climate shocks.
Social protection is crucial in breaking this cycle and accelerating climate action, yet its potential has not been fully realised. Social protection systems and its related instruments can strengthen people’s adaptive capacity, support just transition, and enable responses to loss and damage, making them indispensable tools for inclusive, people-centred climate action.
Embedding social protection across climate action
Scaling Social Protection for Climate Action – Insights from and for Multilateral Climate Funds is a Guidance Note developed under the Task Force on Linking Adaptive Social Protection and Climate Financing (an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ), and jointly with the five major multilateral climate funds. Serving as both a knowledge resource and a practical guide, it provides recommendations for national social protection actors, policy makers, multilateral climate funds, and development organisations on how to embed social protection across climate action. It also maps out concrete entry points for social protection across Fund mandates, frameworks and funding windows.
By bridging climate and social protection agendas, it is an invitation to both climate and social protection practitioners to deepen collaboration and reinforce the link between these two fields.
