129. Like any major process of transition, the global shift towards green growth and sustainable development will entail structural changes in both the economy and society, in the process creating both opportunities and new constraints. Social protection and safety nets are essential tools for minimizing hardship during such periods and have a key role to play in building up resilience more broadly at a time of heightened risk — whether as a result of climate change, resource scarcity, financial instability or spikes in the prices of food and other basic goods.

130. At their best, social protection systems not only act as springboards to incentivize work and empower people to resume productive lives amid such challenges, but also can help to build effective States — by deepening the social contract between citizens and States that lies at the heart of governance issues. At the same time, care also needs to be taken in designing them so that they do not neglect segments of society that are uncounted in national labour force statistics — sometimes men, but more often women, occupied in informal work that is invisible and not always included in social protection schemes.

131. The International Labour Organization has promoted four minimum elements as essential to social protection. These represent aspirational goals for whose achievement many countries continue to strive, although few have yet met them:

(a) All residents should have access to, and the necessary financial protection to afford, a nationally defined set of essential health-care services, including maternal health;
(b)    All children should be above the nationally defined poverty line level, where necessary through family/child benefits aimed at facilitating access to nutrition, education and care;
(c)    All those in active age groups who are unable to earn sufficient income on the labour markets should enjoy a minimum income security through social assistance, social transfer schemes or employment guarantee schemes;
(d)    All residents in old age and with disabilities should have income security at least at the level of the nationally defined poverty line, through minimum pensions for old age and disability.

132. Social protection systems can take a multiplicity of forms, ranging from cash and in-kind transfers to employment guarantee schemes (see box 11), weather insurance for farmers, mother-and-child nutrition programmes and school feeding programmes. Because they are specifically targeted, such programmes are far more affordable for developing countries than alternatives such as economy-wide food or fuel subsidies, which tend to be inefficient, unnecessarily costly and distorting in their wider economic impacts.

Recommendation 23
133. Countries should work to ensure that all citizens are provided with access to basic safety nets through appropriate national efforts and the provision of appropriate capacity, finance and technology.