Children’s Views: Climate change impacts in Coastal Sierra Leone

In June 2022, a team of Save the Children staff conducted research with 52 children across four coastal communities in southern Sierra Leone about the impact of climate change on their communities. The research comes as Save the Children is developing a proposal to the Green Climate Fund in Sierra Leone to address the impacts of climate change in coastal and riverine communities.

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world and the 15th most climate-vulnerable country globally. The coastal districts are home to 1.5 million people, whose lives and livelihoods are increasingly threatened by the climate crisis. These communities are highly susceptible to floods, severe storms, droughts and other extreme weather events, and they have very limited access to resources to protect against such disasters.

The research explored whether children were aware of these climate hazards in Sierra Leone and how much they understood the contexts in their own communities – both around climate change, and more generally social and economic factors – as well as what, if any, solutions they knew about that communities could take to prevent or protect against climate related disasters.

The research involved children viewing photos related to their communities and photos depicting extreme impacts of climate change on their communities, and then discussing key related issues. Overall, children had extensive knowledge about the link between the climate, their communities, their livelihoods, their health, and how much they could flourish overall.

Save the Children Sierra Leone will advocate in 2023 for greater involvement by children in climate change campaigning, and this report serves to launch our advocacy campaign to promote children’s voices in Sierra Leone.