Children and Climate Change
For every child, a liveable planet
- English
- Tiếng Việt
Challenges
For children, the future is now. They are on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
The evidence is clear: every child’s ability to survive, grow, and thrive is under threat. Viet Nam, as the 13th most affected country by climate change globally in the past two decades, has been hit hard by a potent combination of typhoons, storms, flooding, drought and saltwater intrusion with scarring that cuts across the country.
These destructive weather events are the new normal globally. Each year, people tragically lose their lives, livelihoods or are displaced, vital infrastructure is damaged, and the economy hit.
But, climate change does not affect everyone equally.
When disasters strike, children lose schooling, nutrition, and health care, as well as access to safe water supplies and sanitation services. Girls, ethnic children and those from disadvantaged communities are especially vulnerable due to pre-existing gender and social norms and discrimination. They are cut-off from critical social services and protection just when they need them most. The same factors driving climate change are also severely degrading the environment. This affects the water that children drink, the air they breathe, the soil and oceans they rely on as sources of food, and the biodiversity they have a right to experience as part of the natural world and reflective of a healthy habitat for all species, including humans.
This means for a liveable future, all children in every community must become resilient to climate and environmental shocks and future-proofed to adapt and create a green transition to a better world.
Solutions
No child can be left to face the climate challenge alone.
That is why UNICEF is helping shape Viet Nam’s future with inclusive, gender-sensitive, and child-centred climate action.
Our work is headlined by the Net-Zero Climate Resilience for Children approach that delivers solutions through partnerships with government, communities and children focused on child-centred evidence and planning, child- and gender-responsive climate policies and budgets, grassroots action as well as child- and adolescent-led climate and environmental solutions.
This approach is reflected in our four areas of action.
To play their part in proactive disaster preparedness and responses, we amplify children’s voices to help shape disaster risk reduction efforts and identify, assess and reduce the potential loss of lives, livelihoods, assets and services within a community. We help ensure these words are turned into action by working with decision-makers so children’s rights are accounted for in local and national-level disaster preparedness and responses.
To realize a safe and clean environment, we champion green behaviours and the knowledge children need as tomorrow’s leaders to adapt and thrive in the new normal. Our tech-savvy national communication campaigns encourage child-led environmental protection initiatives, while partnerships with schools and national youth-led organizations inspire a shared vision of reimagining a greener Viet Nam.
As a further layer of protection, we embed inclusive, gender-responsive climate resilience into all aspects of our work. This includes helping build a climate-smart education system, climate-proofing health infrastructure and ensuring the nutrition needs of vulnerable populations in disaster-prone provinces are met. Our water, sanitation and health work promote climate-friendly, gender- and shock-responsive options. We also help widen the child protection safety net to cover children most in need through support of the social service workforce, while also empowering parents to effectively respond to children's needs in the context of climate change. This is complemented by efforts to ensure the national social protection system is child-sensitive, gender- and shock-responsive with humanitarian responses reaching those most in need.
When disasters strike and children have nowhere to turn, UNICEF is on the ground to get childhood back on track. Our emergency responses prioritize the reconnection of children with critical health, nutrition, education and sanitation services. We also focus on ensuring access to safe drinking water and protection from violence, abuse and other harm when they need it most.
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Impact
UNICEF’s goal is all children in every community live and thrive in a safe, clean and green environment. Through harnessing the transformative power of the Net-Zero Climate Resilience for Children approach with our partners, we help children to identify, prepare and respond to climate risks within communities and when disasters do strike, we are one of the first on the ground to get childhood back on-track. Meeting the climate challenge and realizing a liveable future means championing climate resilience and green behaviour so all children can be agents of change for a better future.