Publication: Implementing Emergency Cash Transfers: The Philippine Experience in Response to the 2016/17 Disasters
Loading...
Published
2018-05
ISSN
Date
2018-07-20
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Around the globe, there is an unending cycle of producing innovative policies that are relevantand responsive to today's complex problems of disaster risk reduction and mitigation. A lot ofevidence is pointing to the shifting paradigm in responding to emergencies. Foremost amongthem is the growing acceptance of cash transfers as a response tool to disasters.The Philippines is not oblivious to this developing paradigm. The Philippines is considered tohave one of the most advanced social protection (SP) systems in the East Asia Pacific region.These SP systems are designed to help poor households manage risk and shocks. Currently,there are different types of cash transfers being used by the Department of Social Welfare andDevelopment (DSWD) programs. These include: (1) the Pantawid Pamilya conditional cashtransfer (CCT) program; (2) the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) using cash-for-work; and,(3) the National Community Driven Development program (NCDD). These programs use variousmodalities and mechanism for cash transfers in different stages of the post-disaster timeline.However, the SP element of DSWD's disaster risk management and response interventions canbe significantly improved especially if to be used as a response tool during disasters.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Palma, Pam; Acosta, Pablo; Perez, Joedie; Velarde, Rashiel. 2018. Implementing Emergency Cash Transfers: The Philippine Experience in Response to the 2016/17 Disasters. World Bank Social Protection Policy Note;No. 15. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30061 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Natural Disasters(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-02)This paper makes the case for why safety nets are an important tool for managing the risk of natural hazards. The use of safety nets is advocated both ex ante, to prevent and mitigate the impact of natural disaster and ex post, to cope with the impacts of natural shocks. Firstly, the paper explores the implications of contextual factors to be taken into account in the design of an effective safety net system to respond to the needs generated by natural disasters. Learning from the responses to a number of recent natural disasters, a typology of the different types of natural hazards which require different approaches to reduce their risk is introduced. Secondly, the paper considers some 'guidelines' for improving the design and implementation of safety nets either to prevent and/or to recover from natural disasters. Finally, some conclusions and recommendations for more effective safety net and suggestions for addressing key issues are outlined.Publication Data Against Natural Disasters : Establishing Effective Systems for Relief, Recovery, and Reconstruction(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)Data against natural disasters makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the conditions and actions necessary for establishing effective disaster management information systems. The volume's introductory chapters outline the data needs that arise at different stages in disaster response and explore the humanitarian community's efforts to discover more effective mechanisms. These overviews are preceded by an introduction that summarizes some of the key lessons one may derive from the six country (Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia, Mozambique, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) case studies that constitute the rest of the volume. These six case studies examine country-level efforts to establish information management systems to coordinate disaster response. Not all of the attempts proved successful, but they included important technical and institutional innovations that are worthy of study. Collectively, they yield important lessons both for forward-thinking countries seeking ex ante disaster preparedness and for humanitarian responders hoping to implement good systems quickly after calamities have struck.Publication Social Protection and Disaster Risk Management in the Philippines(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11)This paper evaluates how the Philippines utilize social protection systems and programs to help households better manage disaster risk. Exposure and vulnerability to natural disasters and the effects of climate change are particularly high in the Philippines. At the same time, the Philippines has developed one of the most advanced social protection systems in the East Asia Pacific region. The Department of Social Welfare and Development is prominently integrated into the national disaster risk management framework of the Philippines, taking the lead coordinating role in disaster response activities. Consequently, social protection programs are on the frontlines of disaster response in the Philippines. This paper focuses specifically on the devastating impact of Typhoon Yolanda, which struck the country in November 2013, as a case study against which the Philippines’ social protection response can be assessed.Publication Livelihoods and the Allocation of Emergency Assistance after the Haiti Earthquake(2011-10-01)In this paper, a unique post-earthquake survey designed to provide a rapid assessment of food insecurity in Haiti is used in order to see how adequately emergency assistance programs have been allocated. When modelling the impact of various covariates upon assistance allocation, the location of households emerges as the main criterion. This helps to explain why, five months after the quake, government and agencies still seemed unable to provide an efficient allocation of emergency assistance. What is more, those who benefited less from assistance appeared to be on the one hand families headed by women and on the other hand households with disabled members: this obviously runs counter to an "optimal" targeting that would make the most vulnerable ones eligible for assistance in priority. Furthermore, the fact that associations may favour assistance allocation is an interesting result that should be considered further. It is also found that asset losses had no significant impact on the food consumption score, whereas household pre-earthquake wealth did. This result demonstrates that the impact of the shock has been buffered when households had previously enforced coping strategies, regardless of the effects of emergency assistance programs.Publication Helping South Asia Cope with Natural Disasters : The Role of Social Protection(Washington, DC, 2007-09)Addressing the social protection needs of households during emergencies is a major development issue. Without social protection measures, such as cash transfers for basic needs or workfare programs, many households faced with large economic and natural shocks might deplete their human and physical capital, reducing their ability to participate in economic development. Social protection measures (cash transfers, in particular) are therefore assuming a growing role in the World Bank to help the poor cope with the aftermath of a disaster. In South Asia, all three recent major emergency-related operations in South Asia (Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Pakistan) included cash transfers components. This discussion paper, an input to the South Asia region's social protection and hazard risk management strategies, describes the cash transfer instruments supported by the Bank in South Asia, evaluates their design and implementation, and suggests improvements to increase their effectiveness. Based on available evidence, the paper finds that cash transfers appear to have performed well in providing relief to affected households, suggesting that they should remain an integral part of Bank-financed support for natural disasters. The paper also suggests that the Bank can ensure timely and high-quality support through a best-practice design toolkit, a right-on-time technical assistance facility, and by integrating social protection in emergency preparedness by building the capacity of national social assistance (cash transfers) agencies to respond to natural disasters. Although the focus is on cash transfers, the note also discusses other types of social protection mechanisms used in emergencies in South Asia and worldwide, e.g., workfare or social care for the vulnerable, and which might also appropriate for including in Bank emergency operations. The note covers South Asia, but lessons from this region may also be relevant for governments of other developing countries and donors. Finally, while the focus of the paper is on social protection instruments for natural disasters, several of these instruments have also proved useful in post-conflict situations and in economic crises.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Doing Business 2020(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020)Doing Business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. It provides quantitative indicators covering 12 areas of the business environment in 190 economies. The goal of the Doing Business series is to provide objective data for use by governments in designing sound business regulatory policies and to encourage research on the important dimensions of the regulatory environment for firms.Publication Collapse and Recovery(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023)Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous shock to mortality, economies, and daily life. But what has received insufficient attention is the impact of the pandemic on the accumulation of human capital—the health, education, and skills—of young people. How large was the setback, and how far are we still from a recovery? Collapse and Recovery estimates the impacts of the pandemic on the human capital of young children, school-age children, and youth and discusses the urgent actions needed to reverse the damage. It shows that there was a collapse of human capital and that, unless that collapse is remedied, it is a time bomb for countries. Specifically, the report documents alarming declines in cognitive and social-emotional development among young children, which could translate into a 25 percent reduction in their earnings as adults. It finds that 1 billion children in low- and middle-income countries missed at least one year of in-person schooling. And despite enormous efforts in remote learning, children did not learn during the unprecedentedly long school closures, which could reduce future lifetime earnings around the world by US$21 trillion. The report quantifies the dramatic drops in employment and skills among youth that resulted from the pandemic as well as the substantial increase in the number of youth neither employed nor enrolled in education or training. In all of these age groups, the impacts of the pandemic were consistently worse for children from poorer backgrounds. These losses call for immediate action. The good news is that evidence-based policies can recover these losses. Collapse and Recovery reviews governments’ responses to the pandemic, assessing why there was a collapse in human capital accumulation, what was missing in the policy architecture to protect human capital during the crisis, and how governments can better prepare to withstand future shocks. It offers concrete policy recommendations to recover losses in human capital—programs that will end up paying for themselves in the long term. To better prepare for future shocks such as climate change and wars, the report emphasizes the need for solutions that bring health, education, and social protection programs together in an integrated human development system. If countries fail to act, the losses in human capital documented in this report will become permanent and last for multiple generations. The time to act is now.Publication A Blue Transformation for Pacific Maritime Transport: Overarching Regional Transport(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-06-29)This report has eight chapters. Following the introduction (Pacific Peoples and the Sea), the next six chapters each focus on a separate significant component of Pacific maritime transport, analyzing the major influences and challenges, and, where relevant, key areas for future attention. The topics are: international shipping, gateway ports, domestic maritime transport, four related sectors, cruise ship tourism, tuna fisheries, fossil fuel imports, and bulk shipping, natural disasters and climate resilience, and sector governance and institutions. The final chapter, transforming pacific maritime transport, ways forward, distils the report’s findings into the most significant and far-reaching opportunities to transform maritime transport in the Pacific. These are grouped into three broad themes, infrastructure, services, and governance and capacity building. Ways Forward comes at the end and, for readers unable to view the whole report, is a good place to begin. The rest of this executive summary explains why the Pacific is a special case for investment and provides a summary of the main chapters and findings. But first, it describes which Pacific Island countries contributed to the study.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.