Opm report Template version 5

2.2Assets

The theoretical mechanisms by which assets could increase coping and adaptive capacities are presented below, and the international evidence is also briefly reviewed. It is important to note that, unlike wages and skills, this channel of impact can potentially affect both individuals and the wider community, as well as local markets and economies.

Figure : Asset impacts on resilience

2.2.1Coping capacity

The asset construction component of a PWP can help reduce the adverse impacts of climate shocks. Assets can provide physical infrastructure (e.g. dams, ponds, irrigation systems, forestation, terracing, roads, etc.) and contribute to positive changes in livelihoods strategies such as diversification or a shift to alternative agricultural practices. Other examples of assets include shelters to protect communities from the effects of cyclones and other natural disasters, raised plinths to protect houses and livestock from floods, and embankments to prevent inundation.

The requirements for asset impact on coping capacity are primarily related to the relevance, quality and functionality of the assets and access to the benefits they provide:

Assets must be appropriately selected and relevant to needs in the local context

Assets must be designed, located and constructed in line with technical specifications;

Adequate technical inputs must be assured during design, implementation and maintenance;

Management and administration skills must be adequate to ensure quality;

Capital investment must be adequate to ensure that asset quality is not compromised;

Labour inputs (the total number of person days invested, and the duration and seasonality of labour inputs) must be consistent with the technical requirements;

Asset design and construction must be consistent with the adoption of labour intensive methods;

There must be quality control of the assets produced and the follow up maintenance

There needs to be local government and/or community ownership and management of assets (including maintenance, along with the requisite technical and capital resources);

Access to asset benefits must be equitable; and

Asset functionality and usage must be monitored.

2.2.2Adaptive capacity

For assets to impact positively on adaptive capacity they must improve returns to labour in some way, either by increasing productivity or reducing opportunity costs for economic activity. The causal chain for increasing resilience through the creation of public natural resource assets and commonly created PWP assets (such as ponds, dams and irrigation systems) is set out below.

Figure : The generic causal chain for natural resource asset impacts on livelihoods

Source: Adapted from Ludi et al. (2016)

Each link in the chain must work for livelihoods, and hence resilience, to be positively affected by the natural resource assets constructed under a PWP. To ensure this, the assets must be appropriately selected, designed, implemented, maintained, and function as intended. They must improve resource availability or quality (often water or soil) to increase production. If any link fails, the asset is unlikely to improve resilience.

Assets can thus contribute to adaptation by providing physical infrastructure (e.g. dams, ponds, irrigation systems, afforestation, terracing, roads, etc.), which directly enables positive changes in livelihood strategies (e.g. diversification, shift to alternative agricultural practices or crops, etc.) and renders the local population less susceptible to climate impacts.

However, in order to achieve this a series of external factors which contribute to each of the links must also be must be satisfied. These include local engagement, with those affected (both in government and communities) agreeing on the need for collective action and seeing themselves as jointly sharing responsibility for future outcomes, agreeing to the governance of assets and being aware that their conformance is being monitored (Sharma et al, 2014).

In order to have an impact on adaptive, rather than just coping capacities, assets need not only to meet the requirements for coping capacity, but also an additional binding requirement:

Functioning markets in which the purchase of inputs and/or marketing of outputs can take place are required to capitalise on potential asset-related benefits.

2.2.3International evidence on the impact of assets

There is little evidence on the impact of PWP assets on livelihoods and resilience, reflecting a lack of evidence on the impact of assets overall (Himmelstine and McCord, 2016) and quality and relevance are often problematic when assets are created through PWPs, due to the priority given to the cash or food transfer components of the programme (Ludi et al. 2016). This can reduce the attention given to asset creation, and usually there are few incentives to monitor or evaluate asset quality. Where the impact of assets has been appraised, findings suggest their impact is limited (ibid).

2.3Skills and Work Experience

Skills can be gained through working on a PWP either directly through on the job training and experience, or through associated skills training initiatives. These can potentially enhance resilience by increasing adaptive capacity by promoting increased returns to labour, either through own production or wage employment. The acquisition of new skills can also improve livelihoods with feedback effects in terms of consumption, prevention of distress sales and savings, or through the application of skills and knowledge to adapt livelihoods. This impact is however is dependent on the access to different entitlements which are external to a PWP, such as community resources, markets, financial services as well as the access to different economic activities.

Being involved in PWP for asset creation relevant to climate resilience can also confer awareness of climate change and potentially improve decision making on adaptation actions at different levels.

Figure : Skills impact on resilience

The pre-requisites for skills development to contribute to resilience in a PWP are:

Accessible, correct and relevant climate information from short term forecasting

Adequate contact time for meaningful skills transfers;

Availability of trainers and training materials

Relevance of training/skills to local context;

Relevance of training/skills to resilience;

Requisite capital and resource inputs available to enable skills to be utilised for own production;

Existing market demand for skills acquired;

Mobility of labour (if demand is outside locality); and

Requisite capital for labour mobility.

2.3.1International evidence on the impact of skills

Research suggests, however, that PWPs have not generally been successful in skills development. Skills are often not transferable, the contact time for formal skills development is often limited, and there is a lack of available trainers (McCord 2007; McCord 2012). Moreover, because these constraints are external to the PWP, they cannot be directly addressed by PWP implementers.