ISLAMABAD: The risk of covariate shocks is particularly high in Pakistan, as the country is prone to natural hazards – including floods, cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, landslides, avalanches and tsunamis as well as armed conflict and civil unrest that cause loss of life, damage to infrastructure and massive displacement. On average, approximately 3 million people in Pakistan (1.6% of the population) are affected by natural catastrophes each year, with damages and losses estimated to have exceeded $18 billion over the past decade. This was stated by Minister of State and Chairperson Benazir Income Supports Progamme (BISP) Marvi Memon in a statement on Thursday. “Exposure and vulnerability to hazards varies by province/district and is exacerbated by population growth, rapid urbanisation, environmental degradation and shifting climatic patterns. With a poverty rate of 30%, socio-economic status is considered the biggest single determinant of vulnerability to disaster risk. The Pakistan government has a rich history of delivering cash transfers for emergency relief and recovery since the earthquake of 2005 which provided a ‘wake-up call’ on the need for effective disaster-response systems. Most experiences to date have not been conceptualized as part of the social protection system, but rather as standalone emergency interventions or through Disaster Risk Management (DRM) structures,” she said. She said such experiences were consolidated after the floods of 2010 through the Citizen’s Damage Compensation Programme (CDCP) which provided immediate relief and early recovery assistance to over 1 million families. In the context of devolution, the provincial government of Punjab has developed its own cash-based flood response programme – the Khadim-e-Punjab Imdadi Package – operated through the DRM system as the most important rehabilitation intervention and source of cash transfers for disaster-affected populations in the province. “Cash transfer programmes elsewhere have responded to displacement due to operation against militancy (such as support in 2016-17 to over 330,000 Temporarily Displaced People in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas) through World Bank assisted TDPs and Rehabilitation Project. NGOs and humanitarian agencies have contributed significantly to national relief and rehabilitation efforts through the implementation of emergency cash transfers,” she said. The BISP chairperson said that the role of social protection in disaster response had not been clearly articulated. “Benazir Income Support Programme is the main national social safety net programme of Pakistan established in 2008 under an act of Parliament currently extending benefits to more than 5.6 million families with a quarterly assistance of Rs 4,834,” she said. She said a platform for moving forward on shock-responsive social protection could be established by leveraging BISP either as a programme or through its underlying systems – in particular the NSER database, its close connections with NADRA, and its diversified payment system to respond to shocks. The first option, working through BISP as a programme, could be to ‘top up’ transfers to existing beneficiaries (‘vertical expansion’) so that they could receive additional financial support after a disaster. “The rationale is premised on the understanding that BISP’s target group (a subset of the poor identified through a proxy means test with a cut-off score) are some of the least resilient in a disaster and likely to be in need of this additional support. Vertical expansion would leverage BISP’s systems, all of which function well (though there has not been an assessment of the resilience of BISP systems in times of crisis, which would be a critical aspect to ensure in advance in relation to all of the options,” she said. Published in Daily Times, November 10th 2017.