Poverty in Polycrisis

We are living in a period of global volatility in which intersecting crises are combining with devastating impacts for people already living in and near poverty. This book carefully examines the dynamics of these crises and challenges us to find new ways forward for policies and programming that more effectively meet the needs of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

The book highlights lived experiences of those who are impacted most by poverty amidst intersecting crises—namely climate-related disasters, violent conflict and economic instability— drawing on the author’s 15 years of experience in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia. It examines chronic poverty amidst intersecting crises, highlighting how new impoverishment may emerge, and even surprisingly how some people manage to escape or remain out of poverty in these contexts. It offers a multi-scalar, dynamic investigation of poverty and intersecting crises to identify ways forward for policies and programming.

It is an essential read for practitioners working on poverty and inequality reduction in low- and middle-income countries, as well as for researchers and students of global development, environmental and peace studies, and economics, public policy, and sociology more broadly.

Written by Vidya Diwakar, IDS Research Fellow and CPAN Deputy Director

Financial Inclusion & Resilience Across the Humanitarian, Development and Peace Nexus

We live in an era of uncertainty marked by intersecting crises, shocks, and stressors; these circumstances undermine food, nutrition, and economic security as well as productive livelihoods, health, and safety. In this context, significant attention and resources are devoted to strategies that build household and community resilience in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Notwithstanding progress to date on prioritizing resilience approaches to achieve key outcomes across the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP)nexus, evidence suggests significant additional potential for using financial inclusion strategies to promote resilience.

This working paper describes some of the current, evidence-based thinking on the roles that financial inclusion can play in fostering household and community resilience in response to varying types of vulnerability, risks, and crises. It outlines the types of benefits that financial inclusion can accrue to poor households and communities when integrated within broader resilience-focused services. It first presents a multi-sectoral resilience framework to embed financial inclusion (and financial capitals) as a key part of a gender-sensitive resilient system. It recognizes as part of the context the array of shocks, stressors, and crises prevalent today, and accordingly the need for people in and near poverty to adapt to local realities of climate, violent conflict, and pandemics such as COVID-19 that drive and amplify financial risks.

In this process, it focuses especially on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from across Southeast Asia, subSaharan Africa, and Latin America. In doing so, it aims to provide insights to national policymakers in LMICs as well as to international development practitioners on the most promising sets of interventions and partnerships that can catalyze sustainable financial inclusion among people in and near poverty amid crises.

The cross-country data on financial inclusion and crises suggests that: people living in areas with limited ability to adapt to climate change also have low savings and limited access to timely, affordable finance (savings, credit, insurance, or transfers) which may reinforce their vulnerabilities in times of climate-related disasters; people in and near poverty living in fragile, conflict-affected situations experience difficulties in coming up with funds to cope with emergencies during times of crises; and many people in and near poverty turned to informal sources as a means of coping with the income loss experienced during COVID-19.

Read the working paper

Responding to Polycrisis in Ethiopia and Kenya

The spread of Covid-19 was layered on to various intersecting crises (‘polycrisis’), worsening people’s lives and weakening governments’ responses to the pandemic. Many responses to multiple crises focus on single hazards.

This brief highlights effective responses to Covid-19, drought and conflict from Kenya and Ethiopia, which may offer lessons for future policy and programming that equitably address multiple crises.

It focuses on two examples of how governments and local actors have sought to strengthen people’s ability to cope with multiple crises: through collaboration at different levels of governance across sectors; and strengthening resilience through water management.

Download the policy brief