Missed the webinar? Watch the recording on ARNEC's YouTube Channel and use the following links to access the webinar materials.

• Highlights of ARNEC Webinar, "Putting Young Children at the Center of Environmental and Climate Change Actions: the role of Early Childhood Development."

• Presentation slides deck

Entitled Putting young children at the center of environmental and climate change actions, this webinar aims to kickstart ARNEC, UNICEF EAPRO and Save the Children’s Asia-Pacific regional initiative around advocating for young children’s rights to clean, safe and sustainable environments, focused on climate change and other environmental issues (indoor and outdoor pollution, a lack of clean and protective play and recreation spaces and exposure to environmental toxins such as lead and mercury).

This webinar will introduce the building blocks for the initiative, exploring the interlinkages among ECD, climate change and other environmental risks focusing on the vulnerability of the youngest children to these two challenges, how they have been excluded in global discourse and actions such as COP26, and why ECD provides an opportunity to build resilience, adaptation and mitigation for sustainable development.

This webinar builds on ARNEC’s leadership in the 2019 Ha Noi Call to Action and subsequent collaborative Regional and Global Calls to Action released in the lead up to and during COP26; these Calls urged sustainable and measurable actions at global, regional, and country levels to reduce global warming, lessen the impacts of climate change, and secure a healthy and liveable planet for young children. Post COP26 negotiations, ARNEC, Save and UNICEF will lay out our proposed plan of action over the next three years for this initiative on clean, safe, and sustainable environments for early childhood development.

We will invite participants to join the new Community of Practice (CoP) working in partnership to address the impacts of environmental and climate challenges on young children through knowledge generation, advocacy, partnerships, and capacity building, so that in the lead up to and during COP27, young children are included in the global response and national plans. More broadly, this Community of Practice will create a movement to promote actions at the different stakeholder levels supporting this regional initiative to increase awareness, investment and political commitment in the areas of policy, programs and financing that address the impacts of the environmental and climate crises on young children.

This webinar aims to have participants from both the ECD sector (health, nutrition, care and education) who may be working with ECD and involved in policy-making, planning, implementing and environmental and climate change experts, to bridge the gap and learn more about the intersection between sustainable development and ECD, and how to involve the youngest children in climate and environmental responses.

The objectives of this webinar are as follows:

• Understand the linkages between climate change, environmental issues and ECD and why ECD is an opportunity to build resilience, adaptation and mitigation for sustainable development

• Outline what ARNEC and partners will be doing over the next three years to support the youngest children in the region to address the impact of environment and climate challenges

• Launch the Community of Practice (CoP) on ECD, climate change and environmental issues – outline the aim of the CoP and some upcoming activities and invite participants to be part of this CoP

• Invite participants to help us identify environmental and climate policy makers who can champion the central importance of ECD in the fight against climate and environmental challenges.

Watch the recording of the webinar on ARNEC's Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/_o06l4s9Jc4

Related resources:

Video - How does climate change affect children in Malaysia? (https://youtu.be/6FwbTgKSz-o)

Video - Voices Rising - a nursery rhyme animation on the climate crisis (https://youtu.be/RSBZzZ7JwRw)

World Bank - Moving Toward Climate Budgeting : Policy Note

UNICEF - The Principles and Policy Guidance on Children’s Rights to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment in the ASEAN Region