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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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Rethinking support for adaptive capacity to climate change. The role of development interventions
This paper is based on an analysis of three country studies conducted by national research teams in eight research sites in Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique for ACCRA. It describes the Local Adaptive Capacity (LAC) framework developed for this project, its
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Aligning Regional and Global Disaster Risk Reduction Agendas. Summary of key regional political commitments & disaster risk reduction priorities
This summary reports on the agendas and priorities for disaster risk reduction based on the outcomes of regional conferences and forums that took place worldwide in 2010 and 2011. These outcomes were also considered for the agenda of the third session of
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A right to participate: Securing children’s role in climate change adaptation
The impacts of climate change are already being felt- most acutely by millions of the world’s poor. Millions are already facing hunger, disease and conflict due to climate change, and ‘children in the world’s poorest communities are the most vulnerable’.
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Newborn and child survival. Policy Brief
An estimated 8.8 million children die before the age of five each year – that’s almost one child every three seconds.Nearly all – 97% – of these children die in low- or middle-income countries, and disproportionately from the poorest and most marginalised
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Children as agents of change for disaster risk reduction- Lessons from El Salvador and the Philippines
This paper examines how children’s voices are represented and heard in disaster risk reduction policy and decision-making spaces, and by assessing the level of capacity children have for preventing disasters vis-à-vis their parents. This challenge and the
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Legacy of disasters:The impact of climate change on children
The evidence is clear: global warming is a fact, and it will have a dramatic impact on humankind. The likely effects of this warming – increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, temperature extremes, a global rise in the sea levels – will be unev
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Climate Change, Child Rights and Intergenerational Justice- Policy Briefing
The response to climate change will profoundly affect the quality of life of future generations of children, yet this intergenerational aspect has yet to be placed at the heart of climate change discussions. a child rights approach to climate change would
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Feeling the Heat: Child survival in a changing climate
Climate change is the biggest global health threat to children in the 21st century and represents an immediate global emergency. Tackling the issues children face as a result of climate change must be made a priority. Save the Children's report, Feeling t
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Reducing risks, Saving lives
This booklet addresses disaster risk reduction (DRR) as any activity carried out by a village, community, aid agency or government that helps vulnerable communities, and especially children, to prepare for, reduce the impact of, or prevent disasters. It d
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Children and Disaster Risk Reduction: Taking stock and moving forward
Recent decades have seen significant growth in the number of reported disasters such as droughts, floods and cyclones. Science tells us that this trend is likely to be exacerbated by climate change. More people are being adversely affected by these events
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Perilous Passages- Migration, Mobility and Child Protection Issues in Malda, West Bengal
Research centred on intervention for the category of children at risk of becoming the victims of trafficking in Malda, West Bengal, and the factors that expose a child to the high risk of trafficking in human beings. Building the capacities of local organ
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"Clouds but little rain..."-- A local perspective of progress towards implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action
This study assesses the progress undertaken in implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action at local level, and identifies a significant gap between national and local level action. It serves to connect policy formulation at international and national leve