A Systems Thinking Lens to adapting ECCD Systems in Response to Climate Change

• In Event: Collective action towards ECD

Proposal

By 2030, all of Save the Children’s ECCD programming and advocacy aims to be climate responsive in terms of its design, implementation, and measurement. This paper brings together conceptual thinking around how to address the impact of climate change and environmental degradation on young children.

The climate crisis exacerbates profound inequalities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It disproportionately impacts children’s rights to survive, develop, participate and be protected, and puts the SDGs at risk, including SDG 4.2.1(all children are able to reach their developmental potential). Even before the pandemic, years of underinvestment in ECCD have led to uneven access to learning and development opportunities across geographic areas and groups of children, and few interventions being scaled.

With increasing frequency and intensity of climate change events, losses will outpace development gains, which will widen inequities. A review of literature found that climate change impacts young children’s development and wellbeing, especially those from low- and middle-income countries that are highly vulnerable to hazards and deficiencies in preparedness. Young children's physical and social environment is disrupted as more extreme and more frequent disasters displace families, affect ECCD services, and deepen poverty. These adverse experiences can increase caregiver’ depression and household and community violence. Children’s development may also be affected biologically by climate change, through an increase in preterm births, malnutrition, disabilities, and the impact of toxic stress on brain architecture. Without nurturing care, the most excluded children, already experiencing or exposed to climate shocks, are at a significant risk of never reaching their full potential.
Save the Children applies systems thinking in the ECCD agenda as a sustainable solution to addressing the impact of climate change. Building on climate change programming on Climate Resilience, Disaster Risk Reduction, and Climate Change Adaptation, Save the Children’s strategy has four pillars of resilience and adaption that will ensure children are safe, nurtured, playing and learning amidst climate disasters and slow onset climate crises: 1) All children and caregivers can access funded services for nurturing care, 2)These services provide holistic and continuous support for child and family wellbeing, ensuring PSS, physical protection, and contribute to sustainable development 3)Caregivers create safe and playful home environments, where they can build children’s resilience in the face of adversity, 4) Specialized services for disability, psychosocial support, protection and emergency preparedness.

Child-centered, data-driven, locally-led innovations and solutions that are best suited for their contexts will be documented to better capture system change in program monitoring and evaluation.

Recommendations focus on optimizing existing sector-specific and multi-sectoral services and delivery platforms to accelerate progress and reach young children and their caregivers most impacted by inequalities and discrimination. Systems thinking will improve the long-term efficiency of government systems, facilitate scaling of ECCD interventions, and ultimately build societies with greater human capital.

Authors

• Sara Dang Dang, Save the Children

• Rowan Ainslie, ARNEC

• Katelin Wilton, Save the Children