Plan: Children’s involvement vital to tackling climate change
Building on the success of Plan’s involvement at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009, and as part of the Children in a Changing Climate coalition, Plan is jointly organising the 'Bearers of Future Responsibility' event on Thursday 7th December in Cancun, Mexico where this year's climate change talks are taking place.
The event will bring together children and young people from Latin America with international experts including Mary Robinson, Yvo de Boer and Margareta Wahlstrom. The debate will be chaired by Liana Bratasida, assistant minister in the Indonesian Environment Ministry.
Children in a Changing Climate will screen a five minute film which explores how young people in El Salvador are being affected by climate change. Produced and filmed by 17-year-old Mery, with the support of Plan, the documentary places children and young people at the centre of climate change discussion and solutions.
Recent research by Plan examining how girls are affected by climate change will also be discussed at the event. Plan believes that children, more often girls, are bearing the brunt of climate change in their communities.
“The findings of this report are extremely worrying”, says Plan’s Disaster Risk Reduction expert Nick Hall. “When extreme weather events happen girls are the primary family members taken out of school to work either in the home or outside to bring in income.
“Girls are also prone to suffering sexual violence and harassment if they become separated from their family in the aftermath of a disaster.”
Plan International is now calling on governments to do the following:
1. Invest in teaching children to adapt to climate change
- Help girls understand the hazards and risks they face, and ways to manage them.
- Education for both boys and girls on adaptation to climate change will insure a new generation of aware adults.
- Focus on equal access to education for girls and boys.
2. Support girls to take an active role in the climate change debate
- Girls, as well as boys, should be encouraged to take part in planning programmes and policies designed to reduce the impacts of climate change.
- Alongside boys, they should feel confident in offering astute, unbiased observations to their peers both about the situation they are in and how it could be improved.
- They should feel equally confident with boys that their views should reach a wide audience and should be supported in planning, monitoring and implementation activities with adults, at local, national and global levels.
This event is being hosted by the Children in a Changing Climate coalition, which includes Plan, UNICEF, Save the Children, World Vision and the Institute of Development Studies.