Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) aims to reduce the vulnerability of poor people to a range of shocks and ongoing stresses through the integration of social protection (SP), climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). However there are still few documented examples of social protection programming that specifically accounts for climate change – now and in the future – or that seeks to mitigate the potential of disasters in risk-prone communities. This briefing draws policy-relevant lessons for ASP programming from a social protection programme in Tanzania taking its first steps to become ‘climate-smart’.