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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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Child Rights and Climate Change Adaptation: Voices from Kenya and Cambodia
In 2009, research with children, adults, and policymakers took place in drought and flood prone regions of Kenya and Cambodia to see how children saw their rights being linked to changing climatic conditions. This report presents evidence of children’s ca
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Leaving home: Voices of children on the move
Children have become an important part of large-scale population movements both within and between countries and are likely to be increasingly affected in the next decades as a result of globalisation, socio-economic shifts and climate change. Yet, in deb
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Living with disasters and changing climate
Living with disasters and changing climate is about children, disaster risk reduction, and climate change. Based on Save the Children’s experience in child-centred disaster risk reduction in Southeast Asia, this book is a collection of children’s stories
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Displacement due to natural hazard-induced disasters. Global estimates for 2009 and 2010
Over 42 million people across the world were forced to flee due to disasters triggered by sudden-onset natural hazards in 2010, according to this study by IDMC. In 2009, 17 million people were displaced by such disasters, and 36 million in 2008. It is hop
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The Adaptation Coalition Toolkit Building Community Resilience to Climate Change
This adaptation coalition toolkit was developed to promote the strategic empowerment of people by creating more inclusive, cohesive, and accountable societies in the face of climate change. Its purpose is to guide facilitating groups or teams of developme
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Why population matters
Population impacts many aspects of our lives, including issues as diverse as poverty, health, education, water, and forests. Population matters even more today because historically high numbers of people are intensifying these impacts on our well-being at
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Building Community Resilience to Climate Change: Testing the Adaptation Coalition Framework in Latin America
This paper presents the Adaptation Coalition Framework (ACF), the goal of which is to address challenges presented by climate change that many other current climate adaptation models and sustainable development frameworks do not completely address. It ind
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Land, livelihoods and identities: Inter-community conflicts in East Africa
In resource-scarce East Africa, minority groups face major challenges over the control of and access to land and natural resources. Minorities find themselves competing with other communities, with the state, and with corporate interests for control of re
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Participatory natural resource management with Somali pastoral & agropastoral communities: a lasting community led response to climate change
This technical brief examines the experiences of Save the Children UK (SC UK) working with communities in two districts of Shinile Zone on participatory natural resource management (NRM), and shows how this approach can contribute to disaster risk reducti
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ACCRA adaptive capacity framework consultation version
This document is the consultation version of the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA)'s adaptive capacity framework. It intends to serve as a conceptual tool for research existing disaster risk reduction, social protection and livelihoods pro
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The benefits of child-centred approach to climate change adaptation
Climate change, and its impacts on natural and human resources, threatens to undermine human development across the globe. Developing nations, where resilience to shocks is low and livelihoods are often highly dependent on natural resources such as water
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Children and Disasters: Understanding Impact and Enabling Agency
From a child rights perspective disaster impacts affect not only a child's basic right to survival and development, but cut across their right to participate and for decisions to be made in their best interests. Child-centred approaches recognise the role