Social protection initiatives are as much at risk from climate change as other development approaches. They are unlikely to succeed in reducing poverty if they do not consider both the short and long-term shocks and stresses associated with climate change. By exploring linkages between climate change adaptation and social protection for the UK Department of International Development (DFID), researchers at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) have developed the concept of ‘adaptive social protection’. Studying adaptive social protection involves examining opportunities that approaches to social protection provide for adaptation, and for developing climate-resilient social protection programmes.