Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? Conceptual framework and review of empirical evidence

Burchi, Francesco; Terskaya, Anastasia; Sakketa, Tekalign Gutu; Aurino, Elisabetta Article — Published Version Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? Conceptual framework and review of empirical evidence International Social Security Review Provided in Cooperation with: John Wiley & Sons Suggested Citation: Burchi, Francesco; Terskaya, Anastasia; Sakketa, Tekalign Gutu; Aurino, Elisabetta (2025) : Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? Conceptual framework and review of empirical evidence, International Social Security Review, ISSN 1468-246X, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, Vol. 78, Iss. 2-3, pp. 145-171, https://doi.org/10.1111/issr.70004 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/330195 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ SOCIAL SECURITY: ENABLING AND SUPPORTING RESILIENCE Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? Conceptual framework and review of empirical evidence Francesco Burchi*, Anastasia Terskaya**, Tekalign Gutu Sakketa*and Elisabetta Aurino** *German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn, Germany; **University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Abstract Public works programmes (PWPs) are pervasively used to tackle poverty and unemployment, and to build infrastructure and skills in lowand middle-income countries. While their impacts on poverty, food security and labour outcomes have been widely documented, there is little research focusing on the role of PWPs in supporting household climate resilience in the global context of a deepening climate crisis. To fill this gap, we propose a conceptual framework that links the different components of PWPs –wages, infrastructure, and skills development –to household capacity to cope with, and adapt to, climate-related shocks. We use this framework Addresses for correspondence: Francesco Burchi, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn, Germany; email: [email protected]. Anastasia Terskaya, University of Barcelona, Facultad de Economía y Empresa (Edifici 690), Avinguda Diagonal, 696, 08034 Barcelona, Spain; email [email protected]; Tekalign Gutu Sakketa, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn, Germany; email: tekalign. [email protected]. Elisabetta Aurino, University of Barcelona, Facultad de Economía y Empresa (Edifici 696), Avinguda Diagonal, 696, 08034 Barcelona, Spain; email: [email protected]. Elisabetta Aurino is also affiliated with Institut d’Economia de Barcelona, Spain. Anastasia Terskaya is also affiliated with Institut d’Economia de Barcelona. The authors thank Stefan Beierl, Markus Loewe and Daniele Malerba for their useful comments on different versions of the paper. This research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), within the project “Fostering Resilience through Health and Social Protection in times of multiple crises”. Elisabetta Aurino acknowledges the Jacobs Foundation, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR), and the European Research Council funded by the European Union [grant number 101041741] for supporting her time during part of the writing period. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency, or any of the other funders. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for these. International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 145 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. to guide our review of empirical experimental and quasi-experimental evidence on the multiple short-term and long-term effects of PWPs on resilience to weather shocks, such as floods, droughts and cyclones. Such evidence mostly draws from a few programmes in India, Ethiopia and Malawi. Overall, we find that, through the wage component, PWPs can be effective in enhancing household resilience through increasing savings and productive investments. However, these benefits usually only materialize in the case of regular, long-term programmes, as opposed to ad-hoc/temporal PWPs. PWPs’infrastructure component can play a crucial role in supporting households’long-term capacity to adapt to shocks, especially in the case of “climate-smart”infrastructure, with positive externalities beyond direct programme beneficiaries to communities. There is a key evidence gap investigating the effects of PWPs through the infrastructure component on both beneficiaries and other community members, as well as on the role of on-the-job training and its capacity to strengthen resilience in combination with the infrastructure component. Evidence from different socioeconomic contexts is also scarce. Another key gap relates to the identification of the main mechanisms through which these relationships operate. Filling these gaps will support policy makers taking decisions about when to implement PWPs (especially in comparison with other social protection interventions), and how to design them to tackle vulnerability to climate change. Keywords social protection, resilience, labour intensive employment, climate change, economic and social development, international Introduction Climate change causes, among other things, an increase in the incidence and severity of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, wildfires or heatwaves (IPCC, 2018). Households in lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) are especially affected by these weather shocks due to their high reliance on the agricultural sector as a key source of income and to their limited access to Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 146 credit and insurance markets (Dercon and Christiaensen, 2011). Climate-related hazards resulted in an annual loss of 23 million working-life years between 2000 and 2015, especially among vulnerable groups, amplifying existing social and economic inequalities (ILO, 2018). Identifying strategies that promote households’resilience to weather shocks, both by enhancing their ability to cope with shocks once they materialize as well as their ability to adapt to future shocks, is, therefore, a key global challenge and policy priority. 1 Public works programmes (PWPs) –also known as labour-intensive employment, workfare, or cash-/food/input-for-work programmes –are among the most common forms of social protection globally, with over 90 countries implementing them (World Bank, 2018). Given their pervasiveness, they can play a crucial role in mitigating the impacts of weather-related shocks (Bowen et al., 2020; Costella et al., 2023). PWPs are government-led or donor-led initiatives, which offer temporary employment opportunities to people usually living in poor or vulnerable areas (Subbarao et al., 2013). PWP beneficiaries usually engage in labour-intensive activities related to the construction or maintenance of community infrastructures or to the provision of other public services. In exchange for their work, beneficiaries receive compensation either in cash or in kind (often food). In the shorter run, PWPs can support households in withstanding and recovering in the face of shocks by offering income support. They can also promote longer-term resilience, including after PWPs end, through asset and infrastructure creation, as well as skills development. Increasingly, PWPs are used to create climate-smart community assets or provide climate-smart services (e.g. afforestation, land rehabilitation, river walls, etc.). This way, they can support climate resilience more directly compared with other social protection schemes, such as unconditional cash or food transfers (Beierl, 2021; Godfrey-Wood and Flower, 2018; Beazley et al., 2016). It is noteworthy that the world’s two largest PWPs –India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) –were initiated as a public response to two large drought shocks (Bagga et al., 2023). Despite this potential, PWPs have not yet been fully exploited as a major policy leverage to mitigate and adapt to climate change (Costella et al., 2023). This is partly due to lack of evidence synthesis. Studies reviewing the impacts of PWPs (Gehrke and Hartwig, 2018; Sakketa and von Braun, 2019; Beierl, 2021; Bagga et al., 2023) did not have a specific focus on climate resilience. Our goal is to contribute to this literature by, first, proposing a diagrammatic conceptual framework, which links the different components of PWPs to households’different (resilience) capacities to deal with current and future 1. We present a comprehensive definition of resilience in the next section. Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 147 climatic shocks; and by, second, synthesizing existing empirical evidence of the multiple (short-run and long-run) effects of PWPs on climate resilience. Finally, we highlight gaps for further research. We identify three main evidence gaps. First, there is very limited causal evidence about the effectiveness of the infrastructure component of these programmes. Understanding the impact of this component is crucial for policy makers when deciding between PWPs and less costly social assistance programmes, such as cash transfers. Second, despite being widely used globally, existing experimental and quasi-experimental studies are limited to a few rural settings (India, Ethiopia and, to a lesser extent, Malawi). We do not have much information on their average and distributional effectiveness in the face of climate shocks for Central and Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia, or other settings in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. Also, evidence from urban or peri-urban areas, and humanitarian settings is very limited. Finally, our understanding of the mechanisms and programme design features through which PWPs can support resilience-building in different contexts remains relatively limited. Conceptual framework: Public works programmes and climate resilience We define climate resilience as the capacity of a social system to cope effectively with a hazardous event, responding in a way that preserves its basic function, identity and structure, while maintaining the capacity to adapt. Several scholars define resilience as a two-pronged concept encompassing the capacity to cope with, and adapt to shocks (Bowen et al., 2020; Beazley et al., 2016;Bahaduretal.,2015). This concept includes at least two key aspects: a) the capacity to cope, which refers to the ability to withstand and recover from a climate-related shock; b) the capacity to adapt, which refers to the ability to adjust to potential damage, take advantage of opportunities and cope with consequences, and entails reducing long-term exposure to risks as well as learning to adjust after a shock to reduce vulnerability to the same shock in the future. 2 In line with the existing literature (e.g. Beierl, 2021), we suggest that PWPs may contribute to fostering climate resilience through three key components: wages; infrastructure development/service provision; and skills development. Of course, the relationship between PWPs and climate resilience is complex and highly contextual, varying according to the setting in which the programme is implemented and programme design features. Nevertheless, it is possible to develop a general (although non-exhaustive) conceptual framework, which 2. Others add a third component –a transformative capacity (Béné et al., 2015; Sengupta and Costella, 2023). Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 148 illustrates the main pathways/intermediate outcomes through which PWPs can contribute to building resilience at different scales (individual, household, and community). Such intermediate outcomes are proxies for the two resilience capacities, and how they relate to the ultimate outcome, i.e. climate resilience. While it is not always easy to associate a specific indicator to one or the other resilience “capacity”and while, in the literature, there is no full consensus, we do identify some proxy measures. In turn, this can guide identifying the key indicators to be used to measure programme effectiveness (see Figure 1). We argue that PWPs may contribute to fostering climate resilience through three key components: wages; infrastructure development/service provision; and skills development. This framework also presents the intermediate outcomes that these three intervention components may produce, which are proxies for the two resilience capacities, and how they relate to climate resilience. While it is not always easy to associate a specific indicator to one or the other resilience “capacity”and while, in the literature, there is no full consensus, we do identify some proxy measures. An increase in savings is considered primarily a proxy for coping (or absorptive) capacity (Bowen et al., 2020; Béné, Frankenberger and Nelson, 2015; Beazley et al., 2016); the same applies to a reduction in the use of extreme coping strategies –including selling productive assets (Bowen et al., 2020; Béné, Frankenberger and Nelson, 2015; Beazley et al., 2016; Sengupta and Costella, 2023). Indicators of adaptive capacity, instead, are livelihood diversification (Sengupta and Costella, 2023; Bowen et al., 2020; Beazley et al., 2016; Béné, Frankenberger and Nelson, 2015); adoption of climate-smart technology (Sengupta and Costella, 2023; Bowen et al., 2020; Béné, Frankenberger and Nelson, 2015); and long-term investments in productive assets (Bowen et al., 2020; Beazley et al., 2016; Béné, Frankenberger and Nelson, 2015). The first intervention component of PWPs involves the provision of a wage, 3 which enhances the coping capacity by improving access to food and/or avoiding detrimental consumption smoothing strategies (Hadley et al., 2023), enabling savings, preventing distress selling, and/or investing in productive assets (Dercon and Christiaensen, 2011; Hidrobo et al., 2018). Regarding the enhancement of adaptive capacity, wage payments may allow investments in productive assets and technology (e.g. drought-resistant crops), which helps to diversify livelihoods and increase the ability to adjust to climate change (Barrett et al., 2021). In addition, wages may enhance adaptive capacity by influencing saving habits, although this effect may be limited, as PWPs typically provide low remuneration (hence, this channel is indicated in Figure 1by a dashed line). 3. The term “wage”here also includes in-kind (especially in-food) remuneration for public works engagement. Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 149 Figure 1. Conceptual framework linking PWPs to climate resilience Notes: a) Clouds indicate the key design and implementation features of the specific PWP components. They influence the relationship between the specific intervention component and intermediate outcomes; b) Filled arrows indicate assumed strong relationships, while dashed lines indicate weaker relationships. Source: Authors’conceptualization. Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 150 The extent to which wages affect these intermediate outcomes depends on several factors: the size of the transfer (whether it is sufficient to induce change or meet consumption needs); the regularity and reliability of payments, the frequency of disbursement; and whether the number of working days is sufficient to generate a significant impact (McCord, 2022). Additionally, the timing of employment should align with seasonal variations in food security and labour market demand. For example, if access to PWPs is consistently reliable, participants may reduce precautionary savings and invest in more productive assets, thereby strengthening their adaptive capacity. In addition to these prerequisites, improving adaptive capacity also requires wage levels that are high enough to encourage investment in productive inputs, capital, and/or livelihood diversification. 4 This highlights that –like any other social protection tool – effective programme design and implementation are critical. The second intervention component involves infrastructure creation and/or service provision. The provision of public goods is a key feature of PWPs, distinguishing them from cash transfers. Through this provision, PWPs can strengthen household resilience to climate shocks. Subbarao et al. (2012) categorize goods and services created by PWPs into two types: infrastructure (e.g. road reconstruction after weather shocks or afforestation) and land management (e.g. soil conservation projects). While both types of PWPs may mitigate the effects of shocks and increase resilience, it is likely that PWPs focusing specifically on climate-smart infrastructure, such as afforestation and land rehabilitation, may yield larger impacts on climate resilience than other types of infrastructure and service provision (Bagga et al., 2023). Over the last years, an increasing number of countries, such as Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malawi, Pakistan and Rwanda, have focused on the provision of these services through PWPs with the specific objective of reducing vulnerability to different weather shocks, as well as some consequences of unsustainable land use, such as soil erosion and degradation (Subbarao et al., 2012; Adam, 2015; Godfrey-Wood and Flower, 2018). One intermediate outcome of the infrastructure creation and service provision component of PWPs is the adoption of climate-smart technologies. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, such as conservation agriculture, agricultural diversification, and improved seed use, have been widely promoted in many African countries. However, their success has often been limited due to high costs (Amadu, McNamara and Miller, 2020). Hence, PWPs may actively increase the adoption of CSA practices by easing household budget constraints. This, in turn, may enhance agricultural productivity and climate resilience (Scognamillo and 4. At the same time, wages should usually be below market wages, and in general not too high: otherwise, people in the middle class may also be incentivized to participate, although PWPs are meant to reach the poor. Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 151 Sitko, 2021). For example, the adoption of drought-resistant crop varieties can make farming more resilient to water scarcity, allowing farmers to maintain, or even increase, crop yields during drought periods. Additionally, adopting climate-smart approaches can improve sustainable resource use and productivity. For example, drought-resistant crops often require less water and fewer inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers, promoting more sustainable agricultural practices and reducing environmental degradation, ultimately improving their long-term resilience. Just like wages, the impact of interventions is highly dependent on the relevance, quality and functionality of the infrastructure and services created. It is crucial that these infrastructures are tailored to local needs and that they are provided with adequate technical inputs during design, implementation and maintenance. Governance and community ownership of these infrastructures is also key (Burchi and Sakketa, 2025). The third component of PWPs is skills development. Indeed, PWPs interventions are often combined with on-the-job training or broader training initiatives. Training activities on CSA practices, disaster preparedness, livelihoods diversification, and extension services are often promoted to equip household with specific skills that enhance their adaptive capacity. Such human capital-building interventions can have long-term effects on labour market outcomes, including wages, employability, labour participation, and productivity. Compared to cash transfers, PWPs offer the distinct advantage of fostering on-the-job skill development, which can contribute to sustained economic resilience. However, given that many of the activities undertaken in PWPs are generally low-skill and short-term, it is hard to evaluate the degree to which the quality of skill acquisition and transferability occurs in practice (Gehrke and Hartwig, 2018). Several factors determine whether skills development interventions for PWPs would enhance capacities to cope or adapt. These include: 1) the alignment of the training with the local context and resilience; 2) the availability of resources to enable beneficiaries to apply the acquired skills; 3) the demand for these skills; and 4) labour market conditions, among others (McCord et al., 2016; Bertrand et al., 2017; Solórzano and Cárdenes, 2019; Beierl, 2021). Effects on the community The three intervention components can affect not only the resilience of the beneficiaries but also that of entire communities. For instance, the injection of considerable amounts of cash (or food) through PWPs into targeted communities may lead to several general equilibrium effects on local wages, prices and overall economic activities such as trade, production and income diversification (Loewe and Zintl, 2023). This is often referred to in the literature Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 152 they looked at farm versus non-farm income increase, as a measure of households’ diversification of activities and applied a propensity score matching methodology. They showed that there was no significant effect of the PSNP on livelihood diversification (neither for farm nor non-farm income), while it notably increased natural-resource extraction, suggesting that the PSNP encouraged a negative adaptation strategy. Additionally, Kozicka et al. (2024) showed that PSNP had a negative effect on crop diversity, which may decrease farmers’resilience to climate shocks. For their analysis, they applied the DiD approach combined with propensity score matching. Hoddinott et al. (2012) studied the effects of the PSNP on the use of fertilizer and investment in water retention, using matching techniques. Participation in the PSNP alone did not increase the use of fertilizer or agricultural investment. However, when combined with other food-security programmes designed to increase agricultural productivity the effect of the PSNP turned positive, hinting at the potential role of complementary investments. Using propensity score matching, Gilligan, Hoddinott and Taffesse (2009) found a significant increase in fertilizer use among PSNP beneficiaries, along with a higher share of own enterprises compared to the control group. Beegle, Galasso and Goldberg (2017) evaluated the effect of Malawi’s MASAF on various outcomes including the use of fertilizer, relying on acrossand withinvillage randomization. Overall, the PWP did not increase fertilizer use, maybe due to limited employment duration in the MASAF in comparison to, for example, the Indian MGNREGA. In contrast, a non-experimental study by Scognamillo and Sitko (2021) based on multivariate regressions, showed that Malawi’s MASAF was associated with the adoption of CSA practices, such as building soil water conservation structures and applying the use of fertilizer. 9 In summary, PWPs have great potential to enhance households’adaptive capacity by promoting livelihood diversification through business activities, as indicated in most studies. However, the evidence regarding the impact of PWP wages on the adoption of CSA practices and agricultural technology is mixed. Some studies even report negative effects, suggesting that the wage component of PWPs may not be sufficient to induce farmers’adaptation to climate shocks. Table 2provides a synthesis of the main results of the empirical studies examined. The infrastructure component of PWPs Tiwari et al. (2011) and Esteves et al. (2013) showed that the activities undertaken under MGNREGA were linked to decreased variability in crop yields, enhanced soil fertility, improved crop productivity, reduced soil erosion and, consequently, an overall increase in crop yields along with a decline in the agricultural 9. Please note the dashed line linking the wage component to technology in Figure 1. Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 159 vulnerability index. Similarly, Fisher (2020) analysed 798 MGNREGA projects and concluded that these projects helped vulnerable households to confront climate shocks. This evidence directly indicates that the infrastructure component of the MGNREGA positively affects capacities to cope and to adapt to climate shocks; however, this evidence is rather descriptive. A quasi-experimental study of Gehrke (2015) applied the DiD approach to study the effects of India’s MGNREGA infrastructure on agricultural productivity and the employment of non-participants. Specifically, the study compared farmers who had had any form of MGNREGA activity undertaken close to their lands with farmers who had not. The results indicated that there was a positive effect of MGNREGA activity on agricultural production but no effect on the demand for labour. The study also indicated significant heterogeneity, with different types of infrastructure favouring specific groups. Landowners, for instance, benefited from land development-related infrastructure, while flood control infrastructure benefited the rural landless population, increasing their employment opportunities. This indicated that the infrastructural component of the MGNREGA may help households to adopt to future shocks. Table 2. Summary of the results Proxy outcome Number of studies Adverse effect No effect Beneficial effect Food security and vulnerability to climate shocks 4 0 1 3 Employment vulnerability to climate shocks 1 0 0 1 Productivity vulnerability to climate shocks 4 3 1 0 Selling livestock during shocks 2 0 2 0 Savings 14 0 6 8 Ownership of productive assets 15 0 5 10 Savings (long or medium-run) 9 0 5 4 Livelihood diversification (includes self-employment) 7 1 1 6 Use of technology/CSA practices (e.g. fertilizer) 6 1 2 3 Flood control infrastructure, water infrastructure, soil quality, cultivated land, transportation costs. 6015 Effect on non/participants 3 0 1 2 Business training (transition to self-employment) 1 0 0 1 CSA training (usage of CSA practices) 2 0 0 2 Forestry skills 1 0 0 1 Source: Authors’elaboration. Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 160 Christian et al. (2015) analysed the effect of infrastructure created by Yemen’s Labor Intensive Work Program (LIWP), a PWP that provides short-term employment to poor rural households in the construction of local infrastructure within a conflict setting. The LIWP construction projects included reclamation of agricultural lands from harmful plants, protection of irrigation canals and water sources, improvement of rural roads, paving of rural markets, rainwater harvesting, construction of shallow wells, and terrace repair. The evaluation was based on the random assignment of 60 of 120 communities into participation in the LIWP in the first year (2010), while the remaining 60 control communities entered the programme in the second year (2011). Thus, the evaluation highlighted the short-term effects of LIWP infrastructure on water accessibility and transportation costs. The results suggested that the LIWP-created infrastructure reduced the average length of water-fetching trips during the rainy season, leading to an increase in water availability. Moreover, increased access to water resulted in one to two fewer months of water shortage per year. Furthermore, most households (about 80 per cent) reported that they benefited directly from the projects. This again indicates that PWP infrastructure is climate-smart and increases the capacity to cope and adapt to climate shocks. Levine et al. (2024) investigated the long-term (3–5 years) impacts of PWP assets on livelihoods and resilience in North Wollo, Ethiopia and in Makueni County, Kenya. In the first case assets such as check-dams, tree planting and infiltration trenches were meant to ensure soil and water conservation, while in the second earth dams were created to improve water access. To assess programme impacts they employed a mixed-method approach and relied on retrospective information. For neither of the two programmes were positive benefits of the assets found, despite previous claims which led these programmes to be considered successful. In Wollo, the assets were generally still of good quality and functioning; the main problems lied in the wrong planning of activities (e.g. planting at the wrong time of the year; too many assets on a piece of land). In contrast, in Kenya, a technical appraisal detected major problems in the construction or maintenance of several dams, which precluded its functionality. Finally, some studies did not disentangle the effect of the wage component of PWPs from that of the infrastructure component but focused on the effects of PWPs on non-participants, arguing that they were probably driven by the public infrastructure. Within the Ethiopian PSNP framework, the quasi-experimental study by Scognamillo, Mastrorillo and Ignaciuk (2024) found that the positive impacts of the programme on food security during weather shocks extended partially to the broader community beyond direct participants. This was likely attributed to the nature of the public works executed through the programme, particularly the integrated community-based watershed development initiatives. The World Bank (2018) conducted a randomized control trial (RCT) within Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 161 Egypt’s PWP –The Emergency Labor Intensive Investment Project (ELIIP) –which aims to build and protect community assets in poor communities. ELIIP’s infrastructure component includes several sectors including some climate-smart activities, such as protection of the Nile riverbanks, the cleaning and upgrading of canals, and roads upgrading. The village-based randomization allowed to study effects on both participants and non-participants in treated villages. The study found no statistically significant infrastructure effects for the likelihood of being affected by shocks, such as loss of harvest and loss of property. Overall, there is some initial evidence that the infrastructure created by PWPs – when adequately designed and realized –contributes to climate resilience, but the empirical literature is still limited, especially that which relies on sound quantitative methods to derive firm conclusions. Moreover, most evidence is based on India’s MGNREGA and therefore might not be generalizable to short duration or ad-hoc emergency programmes. The skill development component of PWPs The third component of PWPs is skill development. If PWPs include training on CSA practices or other forms of on-the-job training, they may enhance adaptation to climate-related shocks via the acquired skills. Gehrke and Hartwig (2018) summarized the results from several PWP programmes that contain a skill development component, such as THIMO (Cote d’Ivoire), PSNP (Ethiopia), CfWTEP/YEP (Liberia), and LIWP (Yemen). Specifically, the THIMO incorporated compulsory courses on entrepreneurship; the YEP included technical skills training, internships, and employment search support; and the PSNP and the LIWP included on-the-job training. Kenya’s Kazi KwaVijana Programme (KKV) also incorporated training and labour market activation, since its main goal was to improve youth employment outcomes. Another example of a programme which may affect climate resilience through skill development is the MASAF (Malawi), since it increases the use of CSA practices promoted in the country. However, the evidence concerning the skill component of PWPs is scarce and mainly draws on non-experimental studies and observational data, with few exceptions. Below we detail the results of these studies. In general, the evidence indicates that participation in on-the-job training combined with wage and infrastructure can enhance participants’knowledge levels in CSA practices and increase income and employment. One example is the Ethiopian PSNP where participants received training in soil and water conservation and afforestation. Andersson, Mekonnen and Stage (2011) suggested that participants acquiring forestry skills through the PSNP could explain its positive impact on tree holdings. However, the study did not Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 162 disentangle this skill component from the rest of the programme components. More qualitatively, one survey suggested that almost half of those involved in the PSNP gained soil and water conservation skills that they subsequently applied on their personal land (Lieuw-Kie-Song, 2011). Bertrand et al. (2017) evaluated the effect of the training component of the THIMO in Cote d’Ivoire, exploiting the fact that a random subset of beneficiaries was offered basic business training to facilitate transition into self-employment or training in job-search skills to facilitate access to the job market. While the study found no impacts on employment, it found a positive effect on earnings, driven by non-agricultural and self-employment activities in the group assigned to complementary business training. Beierl (2021) applied a DiD approach to study the skill and other components of Malawi’s MASAF, using the number of CSA practices (soil and water conservation) and days worked on these CSA practices as indicators of a skills vector. The study showed an increase in CSA practices in MASAF catchments compared to the control catchments, with the effect being driven by non-participants. Scognamillo and Sitko (2021) demonstrated that involvement in the MASAF was correlated with an increased adoption of CSA methods, fostering sustained utilization over multiple agricultural seasons. Further, it showed that the combined impact of participating in the MASAF and maintaining the use of soil and water conservation structures significantly enhanced households’productivity and welfare. According to Scognamillo and Sitko (2021), this effect is probably due to the application of skills acquired during MASAF public works to the farmers’ own fields. In summary, although patchy, the limited evidence available suggests that the skills development component of PWPs in combination with the infrastructure component can improve climate resilience. Discussion and conclusions With the ongoing pace of climate change, it is necessary to identify policies that support households’resilience to climate-related shocks. This article has focused on the role of PWPs from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. We developed a diagrammatic conceptual framework to understand how, and to what extent, PWPs foster climate resilience, and conducted a comprehensive review of the empirical evidence on the effects of PWPs on climate resilience, linking it to our conceptual framework. While a number of previous studies have reviewed the evidence of the effects of PWPs (Gehrke and Hartwig, 2018; Beierl, 2021; Bagga et al., 2023), these studies do not focus directly on climate resilience. Similarly, previous studies have created conceptual frameworks that explain the link between social protection programmes and climate resilience, Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 163 but this literature either had a more general focus on all social protection programmes (Costella et al., 2023) or was not directly connected with the recent empirical literature (Beazley et al., 2016). Hence, we attempt to fill this gap. We suggest that PWPs may affect households’capacity to cope with weather shocks through the wage component by creating additional economic resources during the period of negative shocks; and by promoting savings and investments in productive assets to bolster future adaptive resilience. Additionally, the wage component of PWPs may affect the capacity to adapt to climate change by inducing households to use different technology (especially, climate-smart technology) and, in general, to diversify livelihoods. Second, the infrastructure component of PWPs has the potential to promote climate resilience by enhancing households’long-term adaptive capacity. This is especially the case when PWPs are used to create “climate-smart”assets, such as water conservation or swales, or provide services such as afforestation, which may benefit the entire community. Third, as PWPs are often combined with training, households’ capacity to adapt to weather shocks can increase, for example, by inducing them to use CSA practices and to diversify livelihoods. Our review of the evidence suggests that the wage component of PWPs interacts significantly with weather shocks. Participants in PWPs are less likely to reduce their labour supply or experience food insecurity during negative weather events than non-participants. However, PWPs may also exacerbate the adverse effects of climate-related shocks on agricultural productivity. This could be due to spillover effects, where PWPs decrease labour supply in agriculture and agricultural wages become less responsive to negative weather shocks. Moreover, most empirical studies from different countries indicate that participation in PWPs enhances households’coping capacity through the accumulation of productive assets, with evidence on the effect on savings being mixed. However, these benefits typically materialize when people participate in the programme for several years and are thus predominantly observed in long-term PWPs, such as the Indian MGNREGA. Furthermore, the results of the review indicate that long-term employment guarantee programmes such as the MGNREGA have the potential to enhance households’adaptive capacity by encouraging higher-risk investments and the adoption of CSA practices. In contrast, less generous or short-term emergency programmes appear to have limited bearing on the adaptive capacity. We noticed very few quasi-experimental studies focusing on the infrastructure component: these suggest better protection from weather shocks for the whole community where the PWP was implemented, which is likely driven by community assets created through the programme. There are, instead, numerous descriptive studies indicating that community assets –such as rural roads, water management and watershed development initiatives –of PWPs positively affect climate resilience. Projects focusing on rural connectivity, water management Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 164 and watershed development initiatives help households to deal with climate-related hazards. A few quasi-experimental studies suggest positive effects for the whole community in treatment villages, such as a reduction in the negative effects of weather shocks on food security, which is likely driven by community assets created by the PWPs. Finally, the overall evidence on the skill-development component of PWPs suggests that combining on-the-job training with wage support and infrastructure development can enhance participants’knowledge of CSA practices, while also increasing their income and employment opportunities, potentially promoting livelihood diversification. However, evidence on the skill component of PWPs is very limited and primarily based on non-experimental studies. In general, the effects of the different components of PWPs on climate resilience may largely depend on how the programme is designed and implemented, as well as on the objectives (e.g. long-term development versus ad-hoc measures). Some studies highlight the relevance of factors such as regularity in payment, adequate management of funds, and quality of assets created through the PWPs in explaining their effectiveness. While it is key that transfers are delivered on time to support households coping with shocks, several sources have documented delays in the disbursement of wages (Mugabo, 2018 in Rwanda; Steinbach et al., 2020 in India; and Hoddinott et al., 2011 in Ethiopia). Furthermore, without quality and well-maintained infrastructure, PWPs are unlikely to increase resilience: some studies provide evidence of the positive effects of active community participation in the different phases of the project cycle in achieving this objective (Shigute, 2022; Burchi and Sakketa, 2025). The International Labour Organization (ILO) through its employment-intensive investment programmes (EIIP) has provided extensive guidance on how to optimize labour inputs in PWPs to highlight the fundamental function of PWP assets and to promote an efficient production of quality and durable assets (McCord et al., 2024). Yet, most of these design features are quite underexplored in the literature, highlighting a key evidence gap for policy makers aiming to use PWPs to enhance climate resilience. Another major gap relates to the contexts from which our studies were drawn. We mostly drew upon evaluations conducted in Ethiopia and India, and to some extent Malawi. Further, existing studies focus on rural areas, while PWPs are also used in urban and peri-urban settings and in humanitarian contexts. Variation in employment opportunities between urban and rural areas or across humanitarian settings may influence the degree to which on-the-job training can lead to longterm employability and, subsequently, resilience to future shocks. In brief, our review highlights that PWPs can be used as an important policy tool to strengthen the resilience of beneficiaries and reduce poverty in the face of climate shocks, particularly if investments in high-quality and relevant infrastructures are made. However, more research is needed to provide evidence on which Do public works programmes foster climate resilience? International Social Security Review, Vol. 78, 2-3/2025 © 2025 The Author(s). International Social Security Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Social Security Association. 165 intervention components of PWPs and which design features matter the most for effective resilience building. In particular, there is a lack of scientifically sound evidence on the impact of PWPs through their infrastructure/service component. In addition, future studies should explore the effectiveness of combining infrastructure projects with skills development and on-the-job training to enhance the resilience capacity of beneficiaries, and beyond. Finally, PWPs –more than other social protection schemes –can have relevant (positive) effects on the entire communities in which they are implemented, especially through the infrastructure component. This is especially the case given the increasing emphasis on climate-smart infrastructures, which specifically have the objective of fostering resilience. Since there are only very few rigorous studies that investigate PWPs’ impacts beyond those on their immediate beneficiaries, more research should be oriented towards a more comprehensive documentation of these spillover effects. 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