Adapting to climate crisis and shrinking space: Context in Asia in 2023 related to social protection and the INSP!R Asia issues

Only 33% of people in Southeast Asia and 24% of people in South Asia are protected by at least one area of social protection. Many countries in Asia spend less than 2% of GDP on social protection (excluding health). Advocacy to get more people better coverage at Asian level hence remains very necessary, though the lack of regional cooperation bodies hinders effective regional advocacy by our members, who most often have to through their national policy makers, which isn’t the best strategy for certain global challenges.

Asia is the continent hardest hit by climate change and witnesses increasingly frequent and more severe catastrophes. Adaptive social protection takes an integrated approach of coordination between social protection, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction to provide longer-term solutions to address the underlying causes of vulnerability and help people prepare for the impacts of climate change. ASP recognizes that social protection measures contribute to fostering households’ absorptive, adaptive, and transformational capacity to climate change with a longer-term vision for resilience. INSP!R Asia plans to have long term actions and policy advocacy to promote Adaptive Social Protection and Climate Justice as a priority in the years to come. INSP!R Asia members consider this an urgent and critically important topic for policy changes at the global, continental and national level. Countries where INSP!R Asia members live are prone to climate disasters, whether it’s fast-onset events such as super typhoons, landslides and avalanches, or slow-onset events, such as sea level rise and depletion of clean water. INSP!R Asia believes that the Loss and Damage Fund as adopted by COP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh and its follow up discussions during COP28 Dubai, should allocate funds to make Social Protection systems adaptive. INSP!R Asia has developed a solid position paper on this topic which was debated and agreed upon by all member organizations and then shared with policy makers in Asia and South East Asia. Moreover, partner organization are encouraged to include this topic into the existing programs and activities where possible and relevant. 

Shrinking democratic space for CSOs and trade unions is getting more worrisome in Asia region. More and more often, policy makers or economic actors are bypassing or blatantly ignoring social dialogue with CSOs and Trade unions, sabotaging tripartite mechanisms and forums where CSOs usually enter in social dialogue with the government. Therefore, we need to adapt our strategy for policy advocacy and strengthen networking with other CSOs and unions in the region who share our vision and build stronger alliances as partners with the same goals for social justice and prosperity. Meanwhile, INSP!R members have to be more aware of potential surveillance, conduct safer communication, creating safe spaces for physical meetings, be more careful with social media posting and abide by the increasingly more stringent regulations of countries for organising, mobilising but also travel restrictions for international exchanges.

India, Philippines, and Indonesia are categorized as ‘flawed democracies’ with index score of 7,04 for India, 6,73 for the Philippines and 6,71 for Indonesia. Meanwhile Nepal, and Bangladesh have been categorized as a ‘hybrid regime’ with score 4.49 for Nepal and 5,99 for Bangladesh, and Cambodia tends to be more authoritarian with only 3,18, just above China with 1,94 (The Global Democracy Index). Many governments in the regions are displaying increasing authoritarianism traits but maintain procedural democracy like general elections. These governments seldom use physical harassment, killing, imprisoned, disappearance, etc. because it risks international scrutiny or sanctions. Instead, they will deliberately undermine or weaken the functioning of trade unions and CSOs through administrative/ financial/ procedural/ legal restrictions.