Background

Further to the adoption of the Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection (Action Plan) in October 2020, ESCAP is collaborating with nine countries (Cambodia, Fiji, Georgia, Nepal, Maldives, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand and Türkiye)  to take stock of the readiness to implement the Action Plan. The stocktaking exercises provide a comparative overview of social protection systems in these countries and share good practices on ways to strengthen social protection systems, ranging from institutional coordination mechanisms to digitalisation to universal social protection programmes. They have also served to provide a platform at the national level to discuss ways to promote social protection and have served to identify new and emerging issues that social protection systems need to address.

Despite efforts to enhance the inclusiveness of social protection schemes, gaps remain. A variety of factors contribute to the exclusion from social protection schemes, including eligibility criteria, targeting methodologies, administrative and implementation constraints or weak enforcement measures. In addition, social protection systems are confronted by an increasingly volatile riskscape in Asia and the Pacific. With increasing attention towards adaptive and shock-responsive social protection systems, policymakers will need to define how to address preparedness, early warning systems, post-crises rehabilitation as well as financing mechanisms to respond to climate change-related shocks and build climate resilience.

Social protection can play an important role in building people’s resilience in the context of slow onset events, such as sea level rise, increasing temperatures, ocean acidification, glacial retreat and related impacts, salinization, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and desertification.1 In the shift towards a carbon neutral economy, social protection can help smoothen people’s transition and facilitate mitigation and adaptation measures. In addition to climate-specific social protection measures, robust social protection floors will be needed to ensure people are resilient across the lifecycle. 

ESCAP convened a regional meeting to bring together participants in the stocktaking exercises to exchange knowledge, identify priority pathways and identify capacity development needs to advance the regional agenda on social protection. The regional meeting also served as an opportunity to address the emerging area of climate resilient social protection and for countries to discuss potential entry points and capacity needs to support national policy development in this area.

The regional meeting was held in-person on 7 October 2024, back-to-back with the eighth session of the Committee on Social Development, 8-10 October 2024, UNCC, Bangkok.

Objectives

• Exchange knowledge and good practices on social protection
• Discuss entry points and capacity needs to support national policy development on climate resilient social protection.
• Seek feedback on the Action Plan and ways to strengthen cooperation and identify priority pathways to advance the regional agenda on social protection in Asia and the Pacific.

Participants

Participants of around 40 persons included two representatives from the nine countries that had participated in the stocktaking exercises, as well as key stakeholders from international organisations, CSOs, trade unions and private sector that were Bangkok-based and online.

Format

The meeting was held in-person involving a mixture of interactive discussions and short snapshot presentations that outline priority developments or issues.