Developing The UNICEF Child Climate Risk Index (CCRI)

All countries are facing the challenges of climate change and a degrading natural environment. Some countries, and children within those countries, are more at risk of the impacts of climate change than others. Moreover, some countries have in place mechanisms that make them more resilient and ready to address the negative effects of climate change. The Child Climate Risk Index (CCRI) aims to capture children specific exposure to climate-related hazards, the degree to which they are vulnerable, and the degree to which countries are resilient and ready to address the effects of climate and environmental change. The index will consider adaptive capacity as a component of vulnerability and as such will take account of the latest available data and provide strong links with UNICEF programming. This approach adopts and allies with the IPCC risk framework (IPCC 2014 ) and as such considers Risk as being composed of the key domains of Hazards, Exposure to identified Hazards and Vulnerability, where Vulnerability has the components of both Sensitivity (immediate impact of hazard) and Adaptive Capacity (ability to respond in the longer term). Thus, indicators are selected which reflect these domains and more specifically reflect these domains with a specific relevance to children. Indeed, one of the key aims of this work is to identify a Risk Index that is specifically sensitive to the experience of children, and in so doing shows not only that children are uniquely at risk to environmental hazards but that this risk is not simply a fixed proportion of overall community or geographical risk but a semi-independent variable that provides unique information of deep relevance to the mitigation of child risk from environmental drivers. The index can be utilized for the purposes of monitoring and evaluation of child vulnerability and exposure to hazards as well as facilitate UNICEF advocacy purposes on the international stage and climate screening for programmes and projects. In addition, the CCRI will enhance programme planning with the development of the Climate Information Services Platform (CISP) which will provide plausible assessments of climate and environmental risks that children face for programme planning both now and in the future such as the Social Protection Programme, or Improving Child Nutrition Outcomes.