Designing Social Protection for Compounding Shocks

Honduras launches its first adaptive social protection policy, grounded in community evidence

Honduras is dealing with overlapping shocks that are stretching household resilience and exposing gaps in existing safety nets. Climate change is intensifying droughts, floods, and storms. Disasters and health crises disrupt services and livelihoods. Insecurity, forced displacement, and economic volatility add further pressure—especially in places where public support is already limited. For many families, risk is no longer occasional. It is compounding.

Against this backdrop, the Secretariat of Social Development (SEDESOL) designed and launched Honduras’ first Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) Policy in 2025. The policy sets out a national framework for strengthening social protection so it can better anticipate, absorb, and adapt to climate, disaster, displacement, health, and economic shocks. It is intended to guide government institutions as well as humanitarian and development actors working in high-risk territories.

Building the policy on local realities

To inform the ASP Policy with evidence that reflects what communities are experiencing on the ground, SEDESOL partnered with the CGIAR Climate Security Team of the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, under the Climate Action Science Program. The collaboration took place under the project Expanding the Climate Security Observatory (CSO) as a Decision-Support Tool for Policymakers in Honduras, financed by Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs.

CGIAR’s contribution focused on two practical needs in the policy process: (1) generating and synthesizing evidence on how shocks affect different groups and territories, and (2) facilitating structured dialogue so that local perspectives could be translated into national policy considerations. The aim was not to “add” community voices at the end, but to integrate them into how priorities and action lines were defined.

Evidence from fifteen municipalities

Participatory consultations were conducted in fifteen municipalities identified through geospatial analysis using the INFORM Risk Index and the 2023 National Migration and Remittances Survey. These consultations documented how different shocks are experienced locally and how they interact.

Community members described climate and disaster impacts alongside displacement pressures, health-related disruptions, and income shocks. They also pointed to who is most affected and why. Women and youth, in particular, highlighted disproportionate burdens—such as increased unpaid care responsibilities, school absenteeism, and reduced income opportunities—when households face repeated stressors.

The consultations also captured existing coping mechanisms. Participants noted informal savings groups, temporary employment, and short-term adjustments in livelihood strategies. But they also underscored limits: informal coping can help people get through a bad month, yet it often cannot protect assets, prevent negative trade-offs, or reduce longer-term vulnerability without stronger coordination and sustained support.

Findings from these municipal consultations were consolidated in the report Protección Social Adaptativa en Honduras: Diagnóstico Participativo y Propuestas Locales, which presented locally defined proposals and strategic considerations relevant to policy design.

To connect municipal evidence with national decision-making, SEDESOL and CGIAR convened a multisectoral national workshop in July 2025. The workshop brought together government institutions (including SERNA, COPECO, the Ministries of Health and Labor), UN agencies, development partners, and civil society organizations. Participants reviewed and validated the consultation findings and discussed how adaptive elements could be embedded across sectors.

Discussion focused on practical policy entry points, including:

• adaptive components for housing policy
• potential expansion of the School Feeding Program
• reintegration support for displaced and migrant populations
• strengthened early warning systems and improved data interoperability

Outcomes were consolidated in a second report, Protección Social Adaptativa en Honduras: Recomendaciones para una Estrategia Nacional. The recommendations emphasized aligning climate and social financing, tailoring responses to specific shocks and territories, institutionalizing community roles in the system, and addressing structural drivers of vulnerability rather than only responding after impacts occur.

Policy launch and what it enables

Together, the municipal consultations and national workshop created a shared evidence base and a set of negotiated priorities that directly informed the ASP Policy. With its official launch in November 2025, Honduras now has a national framework designed to help institutions plan for and respond to multiple shocks in a more coordinated, risk-informed way.

“The CGIAR team has supported us throughout different stages of our Adaptive Social Protection Policy, from developing the conceptual framework to generating evidence, fostering dialogue, and shaping goals and action plans,” said Darguin Amaya, Coordinator of the Adaptive Social Protection Policy at SEDESOL.

Implementation results are not yet reported. However, the policy is intended to reduce vulnerability and strengthen long-term resilience among the most at-risk populations by improving how social protection systems anticipate risks, target support, and coordinate across sectors and territories. In a region where climate impacts and mobility pressures are growing, Honduras’ ASP Policy positions the country as an early mover on adaptive social protection in Latin America.

This work is carried out with support from the CGIAR Climate Action Science Program (CASP) and the CGIAR Food Frontiers and Security (FFS) Science Program. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders/