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2Vulnerability context

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, with large segments of its population facing poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity. Out of a population of approximately 26.4 million, an estimated 70% subsisted below the $1.90 per day poverty line in 2008. The adult literacy rate is just over 50% and average life expectancy at birth is just 55 years (World Bank 2016a). One-third of the population is chronically food-insecure, and half a million children aged 6–23 months are undernourished (WFP 2016), with 43% of children under five suffering from malnutrition.

Poverty is largely a rural phenomenon, with an estimated 68% of the population living in rural areas and engaged in agriculture, mostly subsistence farming (World Bank 2016a). Rural households engage in small-scale rain-fed agriculture for the production of staple food and cash crops, as well as rearing livestock. Agricultural productivity, however, is low. Incomes from both farming and fishing are very small, and most of the rural population survives at subsistence level (IFAD 2016).

Mozambicans are vulnerable to a wide range of economic, climate and man-made shocks due to high poverty levels, dependence on subsistence agriculture, lack of economic opportunities and resilient infrastructure, and the geographical dispersion in rural areas. Droughts are the most common, since most rural households depend on dryland farming and most fields are not irrigated but poor people are particularly exposed to the risk of cyclones and floods. More than 60% of the population live in coastal areas highly vulnerable to rapid-onset disasters such as cyclones, storms, and flash floods. The main cyclone season coincides with the main agricultural season, which often leads to acute food shortage for affected households. Likewise, flooding in the deltas is a perennial threat to both farmers and infrastructure.

These climate shocks will worsen with climate change, adding to the challenges facing the country’s development and impeding efforts to eradicate extreme poverty, end hunger, and achieve environmental sustainability. Households will constantly have to adapt to changing circumstances and increasing uncertainty. Climate change projections show that temperatures are expected to increase by 1.4–3.7 °C in Mozambique by 2060, warming most rapidly in southern and coastal areas (World Bank 2016b). Over the past 50 years, average temperatures have already increased by between 1.1 °C and 1.6 °C. As temperatures have risen, the frequency and intensity of cyclones, floods and droughts in the country has increased and is expected to continue rising (INGC 2009).

Poorer households in rural areas are most vulnerable to these climate shocks because their livelihoods and assets are highly sensitive to them. They also suffer from a lack of timely information, lack of access to financial instruments such as savings, credit and insurance, and overdependence on informal safety nets that often break down at times of crisis. They thus have little capacity to anticipate, cope and recover, and are at increased risk of falling into poverty traps as a result.

The GoM has made significant progress in the areas of social protection and disaster response. The most notable trend has been a shift from relief assistance to a culture of prevention, mitigation and contingency planning. Important steps have been made in the progressive establishment of a national social protection floor, including the approval of a new regulatory framework in 2009 and the adoption of a National Strategy for Basic Social Security (ENSSB) in 2010. A second ENSSB was approved very recently in 2015.

Despite this significant progress, the social protection system needs further development, and its role in climate shock response still needs to be clarified, with the role of PASP in particular to be explored, due to its potential to play a social protection function while also contributing to resilience and disaster mitigation.

Theories of change linking PWPs to resilience

In this research we prefer to talk of ‘resilience’ to climate shocks rather than the alternative ‘climate change adaptation’ because the former helps to capture the different actions needed to strengthen households’ capacity to deal not only with the shocks associated to climate change but also to seasonality.

Resilience consists of two types of capacities: coping and adaptive. The former is the capacity to buffer and recover after a climate shock in the short term. The latter is the capacity to adjust to potential damage, take advantage of opportunities, and respond to consequences. It applies to medium and long-term responses to the increase of climate risk and uncertainty.

It is important to mention that DRM (i.e. actions aiming to avoid, lessen or transfer the adverse effects of climate shocks by prevention, mitigation and preparation) increases resilience and is therefore also considered in this study.

The generic PWP theory of change (McCord, 2012) indicates that PWPs have the potential to affect resilience through three main vectors: wage, assets created, and skills training and work experience. In this section we provide a theoretical framework describing how PASP, as a PWP, could increase resilience through these channels, and the requirements for this to take effect.

Figure : Potential PASP vectors for effects on resilience

Each of these vectors can contribute to resilience in various ways, and to have the desired effect a series of requirements relating to PWP design and implementation need to be fulfilled, and a number of external factors determining the outcome also need to be satisfied. These issues are discussed in turn below in relation to each vector, with particular reference to the programme specific requirements.

2.1Wage

Wages can potentially increase the coping and adaptive capacities of beneficiaries and communities. These channels of impact are described below and illustrated in figure 2, with blue indicating short term results during the period of wage transfer and green as medium and long term impacts continuing after the period of employment.

Figure : The potential impact of wage on resilience

2.1.1Coping capacity

The wage can have an impact on short-term coping capacity in three ways. The first is to promote consumption by improving access to food, although nutrition remains conditional on availability and utilisation and will therefore not necessarily improve as a result. The second is by preventing distress selling of productive assets during the lean season or times of crisis. The third is by enabling savings as a buffer in times of need.

An appraisal of PWP performance in the region suggests the programme specific requirements for positive impact on coping capacity are:

The wage level must be adequate to meet consumption needs;

The opportunity cost of wage collection must be kept low;

Payment must be regular, reliable and frequent;

Employment (payment) duration must be sufficient to have a significant impact on the household economy;

Individual employment duration should not be reduced by subdivision of employment opportunities among the community - due to the limited number of community members employed;¹

Seasonal timeliness of employment and payment in relation to food insecurity and domestic and market labour demand.

Given the increasing unreliability and unpredictability of agricultural season initiation and cessation the final requirement is particularly challenging.

2.1.2Adaptive capacity

The wage can increase production by enabling beneficiaries to invest capital in resources required for medium-term resilience. Cash enables investment in productive inputs (such as seeds and fertilizer), investment and allows further diversification of livelihoods. It also potentially promotes increased returns to labour by enabling beneficiaries to move out of the least well remunerated forms of casual wage labour. These activities will also have feedback effects in terms of consumption, prevention of distress sales and savings. This relation, however, is also dependent on other external enablers such as the access to financial services, markets, and the access to different economic activities.

The internal PASP pre-conditions for adaptive capacity impact are as follows:

The wage level must be adequate for investment and provision of immediate needs (consumption, health, education, etc.); and

Regular, reliable and frequent payments.

2.1.3International evidence on impacts of the wage

International evidence is mixed on the impact of the wage in general, with the value of the wage and duration of employment (the dose) being the key determinants (see, for example, Beegel et al. (2015) in relation to the Malawi Social Action Fund PWP). Evidence indicates that transfers, when well targeted at the poor, are primarily consumed (Devereux 2002). When delivered on a regular and predictable way, the transfers can potentially support anticipation of risk behaviour in the form of savings, especially in contexts with high climate risk, although chronically poor households, , will hardly save the transfers (see Solorzano 2016 with regard to Oportunidades/Progresa in Mexico). In the case of most PWP in low income countries, transfers are rarely sufficient to enable significant investment in anything other than survivalist micro-enterprise or the accumulation of assets (see, for example, McCord (2004) on South Africa, and Chirwa et al. (2004) and Beegle et al. (2015) on Malawi).