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

Public works programs (PWPs) are among the most used social protection instruments in low- and middle-income countries. While their impacts on poverty, food security and labor outcomes have been increasingly examined, there is a notable lack of systematic theoretical and empirical research focusing on their effects on climate resilience. To fill this gap, we began by developing a conceptual framework that links the different components of PWPs—wages, infrastructure, and skills development— to household capacity to cope with, and adapt to, weather shocks. After that, we used this framework to guide the review of empirical evidence on the multiple short- and long-term effects of PWPs on resilience to weather shocks, such as flood, drought, and cyclones. Overall, our review suggests that, through the wage component, PWPs can be effective in enhancing resilience, especially by increasing savings and investments in productive assets. However, these benefits usually only materialize in regular, long-term programs. The infrastructure component can be crucial in supporting households’ long-term capacity to adapt to shocks, especially given the recent focus on climate-smart infrastructures. Moreover, the positive effect of infrastructure may not be limited to the direct program beneficiaries but extend to the whole community in which PWPs are implemented. However, it is necessary to highlight that most of the evidence focuses on only a few programs and countries and relies on non-optimal—often crosssectional—data. In particular, the empirical literature investigating the impacts of the infrastructure component of PWPs on both beneficiaries and other community members, especially that carried out through experimental and quasi-experimental methods, is scarce. Another critical research gap concerns the role of on-the-job training and its capacity to strengthen resilience in combination with the infrastructure/service component. Therefore, more research is needed in these directions. Only with adequate information on the overall impacts on different members of the society, and on the channels through which these effects materialize, can policymakers take decisions about when to implement PWPs, and how to design them.