Facing climate change together? The role of the collective dimension in mediating basic income effects on climate adaptation

Surprisingly little literature exists on how cash transfer (CT) programs affect climate adaptation, notwithstanding the severity of the ongoing climate emergence, and the overlap in aims between social protection and climate policy. In this sense, if social protection programs’ objective is to yield (long-run) transformative reductions in poverty and vulnerability, such goal cannot be achieved without enabling recipients to better tackle climate hazards. CTs can improve climate resilience through positively impacting its several dimensions, among which, it is postulated that the social component plays a key role. This paper analyses, through quasi-experimental difference-in-differences, the midline effects of a basic income pilot conducted in rural Uganda, on adaptation to climate change and collective-level outcomes – operationalized as social capital, agency and collective action. The main finding was that the program did spur the adoption of (both preventive and absorptive) coping mechanisms against shocks. Interestingly, not only ‘beneficial’ strategies – such as savings and credit – but also ‘mal-adaptation’ practices – like selling productive assets and withdrawing children from school – were increasingly employed. Causal Mediation Analysis suggested that the increasing utilization of beneficial mechanisms was driven by CT-led improvements in collective-level outcomes, whereas the latter did not significantly influence changes in the usage of adverse strategies.