When El Niño hits home: building household resilience ahead of a record-breaking climate event

As a very strong El Niño unfolds, increasing the risk of severe weather into 2027, attention is rightly focused on whether governments have the fiscal capacity to sustain a protracted response and recovery. Yet one important question receives less attention: who ultimately pays most of the disaster bill?

Households absorb much of the human and economic cost of disasters. Past El Niño events have demonstrated how quickly climate shocks can cascade into livelihood impacts. Households pay through lost income, higher food and energy prices, mounting debt, depleted savings, disruptions to work and schooling and reduced spending on health and education.

This is not anecdotal: Post-Disaster Needs Assessments from 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific show that approximately 40 per cent of disaster impacts occur in social and productive sectors, affecting housing, health, education and subsistence livelihoods. When disasters strike, households typically rely on a mixture of coping mechanisms: drawing down savings, borrowing money, receiving support from relatives or seeking government assistance. Poorer households often have fewer options and face longer recoveries. The 2015–2016 El Niño illustrated these patterns, causing crop losses, food insecurity and malnutrition across Asia and the Pacific, with impacts persisting for months after the El Niño event ended.

This year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction (IDDRR) carries a timely message: Resilience Starts at Home. While households bear the greatest burden of preparing for, withstanding and recovering from disasters, governments have a crucial role in helping them build the capacity to do so. In the context of the current El Niño, three interventions deserve particular attention.

First, strengthen risk knowledge and communication.

El Niño forecasts have become increasingly accurate with at least six months of lead time before major impacts on weather and seasons emerge. The challenge is to ensure that scientific information translates into actionable insights.

Public trust is important. During the 2015-2016 El Niño, governments remained the primary source of information on El Niño and its impacts. Therefore, trusted, timely and actionable public communication is more important than ever. Farmers need guidance on crop selection and planting schedules. Urban residents need information on heat risks and disruptions to transport, water, electricity and public services. Small businesses need information that helps them manage supply-chain disruptions and risks to operations.

Access to information is only as valuable as the capacity to act on it. Climate risk information alone is often insufficient if households lack the means to respond. Supporting households therefore requires coordinated action across government institutions. For example, when forecasts indicate drought conditions, farmers may need to switch to more drought-tolerant crops. Doing so often requires coordinated support from agricultural and water management agencies, cooperatives and extension services to access farm inputs, credit and markets.

Second, help households prepare before shocks strike.

Households often underinvest in resilience because the costs are immediate while the benefits may not materialize for years. Setting aside money for water storage facilities, home retrofits, insurance coverage, back-up power systems and other risk-reducing measures can be challenging when household budgets are already stretched. Poor and vulnerable households may also face barriers in accessing finance, risk information and other resources needed to take preventive action.

Public policy can provide an enabling environment for households to act before shocks occur. Insurance support, concessional finance, risk-informed advisory services and public investments in climate-resilient infrastructure can make risk reduction more affordable and compelling. Well-designed incentives, as part of broader household risk management strategies, are particularly important for households that depend disproportionately on climate-sensitive livelihoods and lack savings, remittances or other financial buffers.

Third, strengthen climate-responsive social protection systems.

Even with better information and stronger mitigative measures, the unprecedented intensity of the current El Niño could overwhelm some households. For these families, social protection functions as a form of disaster finance.

Well-designed social protection systems reduce the need for harmful coping strategies such as selling productive assets, withdrawing children from school or cutting essential health expenditures. Shock-responsive cash transfers and adaptive social assistance programmes can help households absorb temporary disruptions while also reducing poverty and inequality.

Climate shocks affect households differently. While lower-income rural households are disproportionately affected by climate hazards overall, urban households can also experience rising food prices, heat stress, service disruptions and increased cost of living. Effective resilience policies need to reflect the different ways climate shocks are experienced across households and communities, including the distinct challenges faced by women and vulnerable groups.

This year’s IDDRR theme recognizes that resilience ultimately depends on the capacity of households to anticipate risks, absorb shocks and recover with dignity. Public policy plays a critical role in building that capacity. By strengthening risk knowledge and anticipatory action, supporting household-level risk reduction and expanding climate-responsive social protection, governments can help families avoid the worst impacts rather than simply recover from them after the fact.

As forecasts point to an exceptionally strong El Niño extending into 2027, the risks are unfolding against a long-term backdrop of an escalating climate crisis. With 85 per cent of people in Asia and the Pacific exposed to multiple climate-related risks, building resilience at home is therefore not just an El Niño response. It is one of the smartest investments governments can make for an increasingly unpredictable future.