socialprotection.org (2025) This scoping review investigates the potential for channelling innovative climate finance into social protection systems with a specific focus on rural populations. Given the escalating global impacts of the triple planetary crisis (UNFCCC, 2022) – climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution – social protection is increasingly recognised as a vital policy tool for advancing climate adaptation and mitigation, supporting the Just Transition, and responding to losses and damages. This scoping review presents four promising climate finance instruments – sustainable bonds, debt swaps, carbon and biodiversity credits, impact bonds – that could be used to mobilise new resources for government-led social protection. It analyses each instrument's thematic alignment with both social protection and climate action; its potential to ensure a predictable and sustainable funding flow toward national financial systems; and its accessibility for governments of low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and small island developing states (SIDS). Finally, the review assesses their potential impact on vulnerable populations (including rural populations) and synthesises the evidence of success from other sectors. We also explore how blended finance models can be leveraged as an overarching approach to strengthen social protection systems. The study is distinctive in that it prioritises how these instruments can support social protection systems to contribute to long-term adaptation and mitigation goals rather than focusing on their role in shock response.