Exploring the potential of safety nets as part of an adaptation to climate change strategy in Central America

This project explores the effects and the role of safety nets in adaptation to climate change in Central America.

A better understanding of individuals’ responses to extreme climatic
events is fundamental for the design of adaptation strategies in developing
countries. Safety nets (created by the government, communities, organized
groups or families) could be a key component of an adaptation strategy to minimize
expected losses. In a climate change scenario in which more frequent and aggressive
extreme events are predicted, the risk of suffering losses from extreme events
might be correlated across individuals in a given landscape; and adaptation as
a strategy can take a collective action dimension. In this light, efforts to
insure individuals against extreme events can lead to reduced private adaptation,
i.e., individual incentives to take preventive measures could be a function of
the government/community investment in public safety nets and vice versa. Our
objective is to explore the effects and the role of safety nets in adaptation
to climate change in Central America. First, we propose to apply a survey
designed to explore whether and how households share risk with a network of
peers. Based on what we learn from the collected data, we will refine an
experimental design to be applied first with students and then on selected
populations of Central America. The results from this study will be an
important input into the design of local and national policies to reduce the
adverse effects from climate change. To maximize policy impact, both academic
and more popular publications will be included as outputs, as well as a
dissemination strategy targeting policy makers involved in the increasingly
popular process of decentralization of decision-making from the central to local
governments.

Principal investigator

• Naranjo, Maria Angelica
• Alpízar, Francisco
• Carlsson, Fredrik