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This article analyses the role of social protection programmes in contributing to people's resilience to climate risks. Drawing from desk-based and empirical studies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, it finds that social transfers make a strong contribution to the capacity of individuals and households to absorb the negative impacts of climate-related shocks and stresses. They do so through the provision of reliable, national social safety net systems-even when these are not specifically designed to address climate risks. Social protection can also increase the anticipatory capacity of national disaster response systems through scalability mechanisms, or pre-emptively through linkages to early action and early warning mechanisms. Critical knowledge gaps remain in terms of programmes' contributions to the adaptive capacity required for long-term resilience. The findings offer insights beyond social protection on the importance of robust, national administrative systems as a key foundation to support people's resilience to climate risks.