The scientific community has sounded the alarm. Climate change is a global emergency and we have little more than a decade to undertake the urgent and unprecedented action required to limit global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Beyond that time, the risks of deadly drought, flooding, heatwaves, extreme weather, and poverty will significantly worsen for hundreds of millions of people.

Children will continue to suffer the most under the impacts of climate change. With this in mind, UNICEF has set out to examine current national climate policies/plans to ascertain how child-sensitive2 they are and provide recommendations on how to strengthen the focus on children’s rights, including actionable and measurable results for children.

Despite the many ways climate change impacts them, children are consistently overlooked in the design and content of climate policies and related processes.

In order to overcome this lapse, this report assesses the current landscape of national climate change policies and plans and the degree to which these are child-sensitive. To that end, UNICEF analyzed 160 NDCs3 and 13 NAPs comprising a quantitative and qualitative assessment, based on:

• A systematic search of key words to capture any direct or relevant reference to children and youth in the policy.

• An assessment of the nature of the reference to evaluate whether this was ‘substantive’ or ‘passive’.

The Starter Kit is designed to help municipal governments and their partners understand the value of investing in their youngest inhabitants and the people who care for them, and to provide actionable ideas and guidance on how to do so. 

The Starter Kit includes:

• An introduction to early childhood development and why it matters for cities

• An introduction to Urban95

• Ideas for action

• Implementation guidance

This brief seeks to shed light on these questions. Developed by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), a multi-stakeholder global initiative co-led by Results for Development (R4D) and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) that works to support and empower those who work directly with young children, the brief highlights common approaches parenting programs are using to continue engaging with families, including transitioning to deliver services virtually and adapting to provide enhanced psychosocial support. We use the five priority actions to support the early childhood workforce outlined in ECWI’s COVID-19 Position Statement as a light guide and explore how some parenting programs are prioritizing the health, safety, and psychosocial well-being, expanding training and guidance, and recognizing the workforce delivering these critical services. Several short case studies provide context and detail to these programs’ efforts and the brief concludes with a set of reflections on the challenges and possibilities ahead.

Author(s): Kavita Hatipoglu with support from Michelle Neuman and Denise Bonsu (R4D) and Konstantina Rentzou and Zorica Trikic (ISSA)

To learn more about the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), please visit https://www.earlychildhoodworkforce.org/  

SCALING UP NUTRITION TODAY: Looking at progress, building back better

This is the first part of the 2020 report and online portal , celebrating 10 years of SUN. This report will take an innovative approach; the first of four launches, where bite-sized, illustrative stories to spur nutrition action around SUN and beyond will be in the spotlight. There will be more chapters, videos, interactive maps, and graphs showing the progress of the Movement in the coming months.

The report is available in English, en français, y en español. 

Visit https://progress.scalingupnutrition.org/ for more information.