社会保护与林业

There is also evidence that social protection measures have a positive impact on the fight against hunger, malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in rural areas. Indeed, social protection recipients tend to increase the number of their daily meals, diversify their diets, and reduce negative coping mechanisms that affect nutrition and health in times of crisis, such as reducing children’s food intake or removing them from school to support family income-generating activities. In particular, school feeding programmes have been shown to encourage parents in FDC to keep their children in school and provide them with the essential nutrients to stay healthy and learn.

Social protection can improve the economic resilience and financial independence of FDP through a combination of contributory and non-contributory interventions by providing them with greater income security and access to health care. This could also include sustainable agriculture interventions (e.g. agroforestry, forest restoration, soil and water conservation) and/or technical and financial literacy training, as well as the promotion of financial inclusion among FDP. For example, cash plus approaches, which offer cash transfers together with tree seedlings and/or training in forest conservation and management, have been shown to achieve sustainable forestry goals while providing income opportunities. Other benefits also improve resilience to shocks by protecting beneficiaries from loss of income or catastrophic spending resulting from various life cycle shocks.

Furthermore, social protection has also demonstrated to enhance the prevention and protection against covariate risks (e.g. natural disasters, and economic and political crisis) to their livelihoods and well-being. Evidence shows that social protection, when shock-responsive, contributes to disaster risk reduction and management, as well as to climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives and other covariate shocks. Specifically, it has been shown worldwide that the provision of cash transfers  to FDP can lead to an increase in incomes and in the value of physical assets acquired in the market in normal times or in anticipation of, during, and after covariate shocks (FAO, 2023). In some cases, cash has served as insurance and a substitute for consumption, and goods purchased on the market replace those from deforestation (FAO, 2023).

Furthermore, as explained below, there is growing evidence of the positive effects of synergies and coherence between the social protection and forestry sectors to achieve poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation and mitigation outcomes. For example, some public works programmes implemented in several countries fulfil both social protection and forest conservation objectives because they provide cash or food in exchange for work on sustainable natural resource management projects, leading to an increase in plated forests and vegetation cover (e.g. afforestation and reforestation). They also increase the conservation skills and knowledge of participants. Lastly, social protection can protect populations at increased risk of climate-related shocks, and support workers who are negatively impacted by green policies. Therefore, it is essential to implement just transition processes aimed to optimize the social and economic opportunities of climate action by minimizing and compensating for any challenges.

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