Building a fairer, greener future for children
Our climate is changing too fast for families to adapt, and it is hurting those most who are least responsible: children.
Children’s homes, schools and playgrounds are being washed away by floods. Drought is turning fields, food and jobs to dust. Heatwaves and diseases are stealing young lives.
One billion children are today at extreme risk from the impacts of climate change. Nearly every child worldwide is impacted by at least one climate hazard, such as extreme heatwaves or flooding. However, it is the children who already face hunger and conflict, poverty and discrimination that are suffering most of all.
This is a global injustice that affects every aspect of children’s lives and everything Save the Children does. But there’s still time to change course.
Adaptation and resilience
As the world’s leading experts on children’s rights, we’re working with children to transform their lives and futures through new, climate-smart solutions, across all our work.
This means using data and forecasting to help communities anticipate and prepare for climate emergencies because most extreme weather events can be predicted.
It means protecting children from the impacts of climate shocks, including when they’re forced to flee. It means children keep learning even when schools are washed away, and are taught skills fit for new green economies. It means children are protected from diseases and healthcare systems withstand shocks and adapt to our changing climate. And it means equipping families to cope when climate change destroys their incomes and livelihoods.
16-year-old Junior’s Solomon Islands community is one of the most vulnerable in the world to the effects of climate change.
Photo: Conor Ashleigh / Save the Children.
One of the important ways we are doing this is by helping communities across the Pacific build climate resilience. We implement large scale adaptation projects in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Laos and Sierra Leone, funded by the Green Climate Fund. These projects help build resilient education, health and social protection services and systems, directly supporting locally-led adaptation of communities.
Amplifying children’s voices
Children around the world are demanding change. Their powerful experiences and solutions will only make the fight against climate change stronger. And we know that the only way adults can truly protect children’s rights is by including children in making decisions that affect them.
That’s why, as the first children’s rights organisation, we’re supporting children to hold their leaders accountable – locally, nationally and globally – and speaking out together for fairer climate policies, stronger financing and faster emissions cuts.
Sara, 15, at the climate march she attended organised by the child-led group Respect Our Rights (ROR), supported by Save the Children in Kosovo.
Photo: Laura Hewison / Save the Children.
Hand in hand with children, their communities, our trusted partners and global supporters, backed up by solid evidence and robust investment, and guided by our century’s worth of experience, we’re helping families worldwide adapt to climate change.
We can already see our solutions changing children’s lives, and we’ll keep on innovating to discover more.