Country Scoping Studies to Build Evidence on Children’s Vulnerabilities to
Climate Change and Disaster Impacts: PHILIPPINES
Report Submitted to the UNICEF by the Manila Observatory
4 September 2014
ABSTRACT
The study is part of a UNICEF-sponsored scoping on how are children
possibly be at risk to climate and disasters. Aside from the Philippines, four other
countries from the Asia and the Pacific1 participated in the scoping project. The
Philippines Study is an overview of the climate change trends and the potential
impacts on children; highlighting children’s specific vulnerability to climate
change that needs to be taken into account in policy development. The research
used the framework that states risk is a function of hazard, exposure, and
vulnerability (R=f(H,E,V)).
Climate change hazards considered in the Study included average
temperature changes, average rainfall changes, floods and droughts, landslides and
other geophysical hazards. For the exposure, it considered the locations of
children by age and exposure to different socio-economic factors (vulnerability)
such as household poverty incidence, places where child labor is prevalent, child
security is compromised, incidence of malnutrition or hunger; children’s mortality
(cause and effect) and children’s development (e.g. education). Common to the
five countries are the findings that poverty and geography are strong determinants
of vulnerability
The results of the Philippine Study revealed that children’s issues are not yet
well recognized or incorporated in environmental agenda, whether at the national,
regional or local scale. Climate change and their impacts are inextricably linked to
the broader sustainable development goals. State’s policies and strartegies must
also be responsive to children’s needs, especially towards better adaptation and
resilience. At the same time, the Study also noted that because children have
unique perspectives of their environment, they can be important actors (“agents of
change”) in enhancing community capacity to address climate-related risks such as
floods and droughts. Involving children in the design of policy and designing
climate change policies with children’s rights in mind are essential to creating
policies that do not have unintended negative consequences, or whay we call the
“win-win strategies”.
1
Participating countries include the Philippines, Mongolia, Indonesia, Kiribati and Vanuatu,