From Risk to Resilience: Helping People and Firms Adapt in South Asia

This report offers some solutions, focused on ensuring that markets work better, thereby helping poor households and small firms adapt more effectively. Information is often helpful on its own, such as providing early warnings about impending storms, droughts, or floods. Governments can also help by removing obstacles to autonomous adaptation, such as increasing access to credit or removing labor and land market distortions that lock people and firms in vulnerable places. Targeted public investments in physical and social infrastructure—such as access roads, drainage systems, and primary health facilities—and adaptative social protection systems can complement market-based measures to protect those who are most vulnerable.