Social protection in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation: A bibliometric and thematic review

Social protection has emerged as a strategy to minimize climate change impacts by building the resilience of vulnerable communities. It is increasingly being used in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This study reviews the role of social protection in the scientific literature through bibliometric and thematic analysis. Web of Science database was used to retrieve the articles using selected keywords. Historical growth, citations, keywords, and country analyses were used to perform the bibliometric review. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes pertaining to social protection, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation. Publications have increased over the past decade, and 142 texts from various disciplines were retrieved. The co-occurrence of keywords revealed that resilience, adaptation, and vulnerability are used in the scientific literature. The shortlisted themes investigated the role of social protection and its interventions for supporting livelihoods, assisting in food security, and disaster recovery. Social protection is emphasized as a tool for vulnerability reduction and building resilience. Literature confirms the crosscutting and multidisciplinary implications of social protection in the domains of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.