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Climate Change Adaptation (CCA)
There is no scientific ambiguity to the fact that the world’s climate is warming and that this warming over the past 50 years is attributable in part to man’s activities. There is a wide consensus that this warming will lead to changing rainfall patterns, rising sea levels, increased spread of tropical disease, loss of biodiversity and increased frequency and amplitude of weather related natural disasters. Children are particularly at risk in a disaster and vulnerable to the incremental impacts of climate change. It is essential that their immediate and longer-term survival, protection and developmental needs are considered in any activities to prepare for or mitigate a potential disaster, or adapt to the negative impacts of longer-term climatic trends. Communities and local authorities need to listen to children to find out what risks they might face and how they might respond to them.
CCA programs are activities which aim to make adjustments in natural and human systems in response to actual or expected climate change and their effects. For Save the Children, adaptation is principally about practical measures in programming, policy and advocacy which reduce vulnerabilities or increase resilience of children and their communities from the negative effects of climate change. Disaster Risk Reduction and CCA are not mutually exclusive but in fact interdependent; a CCA project may be just as vulnerable to natural hazards as any other project and therefore needs a DRR component to protect the CCA investment. To address the risks and uncertainty predicted by climate change, both DRR and CCA analysis and programming must attempt to take account of the unpredictability of what may happen in the future as the planet continues to get warmer.
Photo: Save the Children
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RecommendedReducing Risks, Saving Lives. Save the Children's approach to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
Disasters have the biggest impact on the poorest and most vulnerable people, and it is children who bear the brunt. Over the past two decades, the number of natural disasters has doubled. Children’s lives are also threatened by epidemiological disasters,
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Child Poverty: What drives it and what it means to children across the world
This new, flagship report looks at the situation of children living in poverty in countries around the world, shining a light on the drivers of child poverty and exploring why it persists, even in some of the wealthiest places. We also hear from children
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Climate Change in Kenya: Projections, impacts and way forward
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been implementing development interventions in the African region for many decades. The effectiveness and sustainability of such interventions are questionable as Africa is still lagging behind other regions of t
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Child Centred Community Resilience: Final evaluation of the Bangladesh Child Resilience Project
Save the Children International (SCI) has been working in Bangladesh over the past three years, supporting girls and boys, their families, schools and local communities in 36 rural and urban communities to build their capabilities to adapt, prepare, and r
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Two Years of Drought Response in Ethiopia
El Nino has caused the third successive rainfall failure in some areas of Ethiopia, and from the middle of 2015 onwards the country has since been in a race against time to meet the resulting food needs of 10.2 million people. This precarious situation ca
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Global Report on Internal Displacement 2016
The heightened focus on the hundreds of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants who have put their lives at risk to reach Europe has also awakened attention to the phenomenon of displacement. The Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) a
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Climate Change, Children and Poverty: Engaging children and youth in policy debate and action
In this Poverty Brief published by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) at the University of Bergen, Norway, the authors argue that children and youth, particularly those living in poverty, must be empowered and supported to have their voi
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Children and Resilience: A collection of success stories from the humanitarian sector, Bangladesh
Disaster preparedness and risk reduction play a major role in preventing the loss of lives and livelihoods during disasters. Directly and with partners, Save the Children has been preparing vulnerable communities for natural disasters and works with the g
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Clear the Air for Children
The effects of air pollution are diverse and devastating. This study, produced by UNICEF, found that around 300 million children currently live in areas where outdoor air pollution exceeds international guidelines by at least six times. A total of 2 billi
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Putting Children at the Heart of the World Humanitarian Summit
The right to be heard is a guiding principle of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children have an important role to play in their own protection and in planning their communities’ response to an emergency. This literature review reflects the