The COVID-19 pandemic, and increased frequency and severity of natural hazards, have placed Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) at the forefront of policy agendas globally. ASP is concerned with how Social Protection programs, services and systems can help address covariate1 shocks through preventive, preparedness, and response actions: that is, adapting and using the capacity of the Social Protection sector, typically developed for addressing idiosyncratic shocks, to enhance the resilience of households – and of the poor in particular – to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks and their impacts (Bowen et al, 2020).Timor-Leste is a young small island nation with a population of approximately 1.3 million people. It is a lower middle-income economy, heavily dependent on oil and gas deposits. It is a nation with high poverty levels and great disparities within the country: with a poverty headcount in rural areas of 47 percent and 28 percent in urban settings, according to the 2014 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TL-SLS), the most recent source of poverty data (World Bank, 2022). In the Global Gender Gap Index 2020, Timor-Leste ranks 117 out of 153 countries, indicating high gender disparities in economic participation and opportunities, education, health and political empowerment (GoTL et al, 2021).Due to a combination of political, geographic, and social factors, Timor-Leste is recognized as highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. The country is vulnerable to hazards such as cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, heavy rainfall, droughts, floods, landslides, and soil erosion. All these hazards are exacerbated by limited and inadequate infrastructure that do not meet current resilience and quality standards. Increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and increased heavy rainfall events increase impacts of climate change for the country (World Bank and ADB, 2021).