This brief gives an overview of different country case studies where social protection (SP) systems have been used to address risks arising from climate-related hazards in urban spaces. It also explores how the existing SP systems in Tanzania, Bangladesh and Ethiopia could be modified, given adequate resources, to become shock responsive.

To achieve food security and agricultural development goals, adaptation to climate change and lower emission intensities per output will be necessary. This transformation must be accomplished without depletion of the natural resource base.

Solar lanterns are a relatively inexpensive renewable-energy option for household lighting in developing countries. However, the transition to these lighting sources is slow.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and social effects on households have created an urgent need for timely data to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis and protect the welfare of the least well-off Ethiopians.

This study provides an analysis of the linkages between multi-hazard exposure, lack of resilience, resulting disaster risk with related loss and damage, sovereign debt risks, and the lack of investment into resilience building. The COVID-19 pandemic has come on top of the climate crisis, the existential threat of our time.

COVID-19 has severely affected Ethiopia, weakening its economic performance. Ethiopia has experienced a collapse in external demand since April 2020 due to COVID-19. While merchandise exports, excluding gold, increased by 5.8 percent overall in FY20, they declined by 4.1 percent during July-December 2020 (year-on-year).

To achieve food security and agricultural development goals, adaptation to climate change and lower emission intensities per output will be necessary. This transformation must be accomplished without depletion of the natural resource base.

The paper provides evidence on the evolving socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic among households in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda. The data allow estimating the immediate economic impacts of the pandemic, beginning in April 2020, and tracking how the situation evolved through September 2020.

A forward-looking measure of “vulnerability to poverty” is estimated and a concerted effort is made to understand the sources of vulnerability in the drought-prone lowlands of Ethiopia.

The brief leverages COVID-19 high frequency phone survey (HFPS) data collected primarily by National Statistics Offices (NSO) 2 of five SSA countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda), with support from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice teams.