Disaster Risk Reduction
Child-centred climate responses
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- Tiếng Việt
Challenges
The climate crisis is here. For Viet Nam and its children, it is very real.
Rapid and slow onset climate-driven natural disasters leave their mark down this long S-shaped country: from flash floods and landslides in the northern mountainous region to typhoons and flooding in central provinces, drought and dry spells in the Central Highlands and saltwater intrusion in the country’s rice basket – the Mekong Delta in the deep south.
The past three decades have witnessed significant losses of life with 15,848 people killed due to natural disasters. The economic toll is also severe, with a 31-fold spike in disaster losses to 2020 and an annual 1-1.5 per cent hit to economic growth on average.
One-off destructive weather events have become the new normal.
But, Viet Nam’s highly diverse topography of mountains, low-lying plains, coastline vulnerable to rising sea levels and river deltas means there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. So, each community’s response preparedness must be tailored to its unique needs to adapt and mitigate the impacts of climate-driven risks and hazards.
Critically children and women, as those most at risk, have the least say on climate action. To ensure their survival, wellbeing and development, they need a voice to identify new and reduce existing disaster risks and take an active role in achieving climate resilience for a liveable future.
Solutions
It is the defining issue of our times. That is why UNICEF is committed to placing children at the centre of the climate response.
This means we view all climate action through the eyes of children and work with the government and decision-makers to ensure national through to community-level preparedness and response plans address children’s specific vulnerabilities and risks posed by intensifying rapid and slow onset climate-driven natural disasters.
Child-focussed, inclusive and gender-responsive disaster risk reduction also ensures children and women help shape efforts to identify, assess and reduce the potential loss of lives, livelihoods, assets and services within a community. We then amplify their voices to decision-makers for investment in their solutions to ensure their rights are accounted for in disaster responses. This includes engaging the most marginalized and disadvantaged to analyze and address their specific climate hazard threats.
We support children and women to play an active role in assessing and mitigating climate risks, developing early warning systems, school evacuation plans as well as recoveries to build back better. Our holistic parenting efforts help inform mothers and fathers of disaster risks, preparedness, and response measures to further empower children. We also provide the skills and platforms for children to act as agents of change to influence their peers, families and friends and raise awareness to mobilize climate action.
UNICEF is committed to placing children at the centre of the climate response.
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Impacts
UNICEF supports the government and partners in Viet Nam to ensure that children’s and women’s vulnerabilities and risks are identified and addressed in enhanced disaster risk reduction policies, investments and practices. This involves children’s voices reaching decision-makers and translating into solutions to ensure they are better prepared and protected.
Disaster risks faced by children, women and communities will be identified in 28 coastal provinces highly prone to hazards, while marginalized communities in 100 coastal disaster-prone communes within these provinces will achieve strengthened resilience. Up to 100 commune committees will also realize a deeper capacity to execute disaster risk reduction interventions for children and their communities.