Addressing climate change impacts through social protection: Lessons from delivering social assistance to climate-displaced populations in Southern Africa (Zimbabwe)

Climate change is reshaping patterns of human mobility across Southern Africa. Zimbabwe is experiencing recurrent droughts, floods, and cyclones, and these climate impacts are driving human mobility, as well as displacement. Recently, scholars have claimed that social protection can help address the impacts of climate change and build resilience. This thesis aimed to assess the different social assistance programmes in Zimbabwe, and how they are addressing the range of climate change induced impacts, through the lenses of climate-induced displacement and post-displacement poverty due to cyclone events. Using a mixed‑methods research design, the thesis integrated systematic reviews, policy analysis, household surveys (n=235), and key informant interviews (n=21) to explore the climate change-social protection and human mobility nexus. Firstly, the research employed a systematic literature review to assess the state of knowledge regarding the nexus, at a global and African-continent level, and drilled down to explore how social assistance is deployed in Zimbabwe and what exists on the ground and how the programmes are addressing emerging crises such as climate change. Using youth-mobility as a lens, the continental synthesis showed how climate stressors interact with unemployment, demographic pressures, and weak social protection to shape migration decisions, and thus argued for a youth‑sensitive and climate‑responsive social protection, particularly labour market interventions, green skills training, and adaptive safety nets that can reduce distress migration while enabling safe, dignified mobility as an adaptation strategy. The in-depth analysis in this thesis, focusing on the case study, Zimbabwe, highlighted that a range of social assistance programs exist, albeit with low coverage, and a limited focus on climate related risks despite that they make up part of the lifecycle risks. Field level research explored varied dimensions of the thesis, ranging from public perceptions on the digitalisation of social protection; lived experiences of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Zimbabwe and experiences of IDPs on the impacts and effects of social assistance programs in responding to climate-induced displacement risks (poverty and protracted displacement). Empirical findings shared a concern about a lack of trust in government, with “would be beneficiaries” of a digital welfare state expressing scepticism in the utility of digital tools for delivering social assistance, citing design‑reality gaps in digital delivery, including network constraints, inconsistent data, and limited user agency. Yet the digitalisation strand of the thesis highlighted the potential of digitalisation to enhance transparency, efficiency, and shock‑responsiveness when grounded in user‑centred design and local realities. On lived realities of IDPs, those living in post-displacement contexts, equally shared accounts of failed planned relocations and limited impacts of social assistance as a tool for achieving durable solutions (recovery and rehabilitation). The research conceptualised “negotiated (im)mobility” as a component along the human mobility continuum. This phenomenon was recorded in Tsholotsho, where relocated households managed two locations to compensate for inadequate land, limited livelihood options, lack of access to basic services in resettlement sites, and limited effects of social assistance programs. The concept of negotiated (im)mobility challenges dominant narratives of immobility as passivity and reveals that poorly designed relocations can reproduce or deepen vulnerability, functioning as protracted displacement rather than durable solutions. The last two chapters of the thesis advance knowledge in two ways. Chapter 7, based on empirical findings on the failure to achieve durable solutions for IDPs in research sites, presented a case for reconceptualising planned relocations as a form of social assistance. Chapter 8 presented a framework for integrating or increasing the interaction between informal and formal social protection systems, using design thinking and community development. Across the six journal articles, including a working paper, the thesis makes three overarching contributions. First, it provides rare bottom‑up evidence from climate‑displaced populations, addressing a major gap in displacement research, where IDPs have remained invisible. Second, it reconceptualises planned relocation as a form of social assistance, specifically climate‑responsive social housing, arguing for its integration into national social protection systems to ensure long‑term, rights‑based support. Third, it proposes a framework for integrating informal and formal social protection, considering the preponderance of low coverage rates/levels in low-income countries where climate risks are more pronounced. Overall, the findings from the thesis make a clear contribution to knowledge, by advancing understanding in the following areas : (1) the effects of shifting from reactive to anticipatory social protection aligned with climate risks in Zimbabwe and broadly Southern Africa; (2) the embedding of planned relocations within social protection systems as a pathway to more durable solutions; (3) the role of livelihood‑oriented and youth‑focused interventions in reducing distress migration for contexts characterised by a significant youth dividend; (4) the importance of strengthening digital systems through user‑centred design and robust datagovernance; and (5) the integration of beneficiary feedback mechanisms for enhancing dignity, accountability, and programme legitimacy. Overall, the thesis conceptualises climate change as a defining stress test for social protection systems, reframing systems performance around the protection of human dignity, the facilitation of just transitions, and the strengthening of climate resilience.

Funder

University of Galway

Publisher

University of Galway

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CC BY-NC-ND

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University of Galway Theses (PhD Theses)