Indonesia is among the countries with the highest exposure to natural disasters, and risks are expected to increase in the future due to climate change. Natural disasters and also other shocks require welldeveloped social protection systems that are able to cushion the economic consequences for those most vulnerable to these events. Many international and national organisations advocate for ‘Adaptive Social Protection’ (ASP) which links social policy with strategies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The main emphasis is on improving households’ ability to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks.

This paper uses the tax-benefit microsimulation model INDOMOD to analyse the adaptiveness of the Indonesian social protection system both under normal conditions, and after a simulated hypothetical income shock caused by a natural disaster, using El Niño as a showcase. El Niño is a climate phenomenon that has the ability to change the global atmospheric circulation and as such to influence temperature and precipitation around the world. The drought caused in severely hit regions in Indonesia leads to a disruption of established crop patterns and harvest losses. The dry periods furthermore often cause forest fires affecting the livelihood of those employed in the forestry, transportation, tourism, and public health sector.