Falling Short: Addressing the climate finance gap for children

The world needs to urgently scale up climate finance to provide critical resources to support the countries and communities that are most vulnerable to climate change. Children are among the most at risk from the climate crisis but they are not only victims. They can contribute significantly to climate action within their communities, countries and globally but their voices and perspectives are rarely heard or considered in the decision-making processes on climate action and climate finance.

This report – Falling short: addressing the climate finance gap for children – provides the first-ever child-focused review of international climate finance, focusing on key multilateral climate funds. The report assessed 591 projects to analyse their child-responsiveness and the findings are stark. Only 2.4% of climate finance from key multilateral climate funds was found to support projects incorporating child-responsive activities. The findings suggest that efforts to respond to the distinct and heightened needs and perspectives of children in international climate finance flows remain nascent. The report also recommends actions that must be taken by Multilateral Climate Funds, Governments, Multilateral Development Banks and other key actors to ensure an increase and acceleration in climate finance that is child-responsive.