Climate change
Whilst the average global temperature is increasing, on a day-to-day level the climate is changing in unpredictable ways in the UK and across the world, from floods and hurricanes to heat waves and droughts.
What Plan is doing
Climate change is having an impact in many countries, especially developing ones, where people have contributed least to its causes but feel its effects the most.
While in the UK Plan is working to ensure our environmental impact is minimised, globally we have been working with children, their families and communities in over 45 developing countries across the globe to mitigate the impact of climate change on their lives.
In countries at risk of hurricanes, typhoons, and other disasters, Plan’s work has included:
- developing child-friendly tools to ensure children actively learn about the climate risks their communities face and how to reduce them;
- assisted communities in establishing early disaster warning systems through evacuation drills and contigency plannning;
- providing families with technical support to protect their livelihoods from climate change through rainwater harvesting, drought resistant crop varieties and river management, levees and embankments.
Plan is also working in partnership with the respective Ministries of Education, to promote the development and inclusion of climate change curricula at national level.
Plan believes children and young people have a right to a say in their future. In vulnerable communities we work with, well educated and informed children are often in a better position to engage in activities to avoid and mitigate the effects of climate change than their parents.
Plan and Climate Change - FAQs
In recent months there have been natural disasters in El Salvador, the Philippines and Indonesia, where Plan is on the ground providing immediate relief and supporting longer term solutions.
We need funds to keep these crucial projects running, enabling families to cope with the situations that climate change is creating in their environments. 
Support climage change education for youth clubs in the Philippines
Assist Plan set up, train and support children associations and youth clubs on the possible risks of disasters caused by climate change affecting their communities.
 Support the training of young people against hurricanes in El Salvador
Assist Plan provide communities with the skills and knowledge to confront the annual risk of hurricanes causing floods and landslides, reducing their impact on their lives.
 Support communities awareness against disasters in Indonesia
Assist Plan increase communities awareness of potential climate and geological hazards, including earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, cyclones, volcanic eruptions and drought affecting their lives.
At the end of last year world leaders met at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen with the aim to decide how the world should tackle climate change.
Plan sent young people from the UK, Kenya, the Netherlands, Sweden and Indonesia to report on the summit. They interviewed leading figures on the world stage, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who told them: "It’s great to see so many young people at the summit. They are right to say ‘this is our world too, you elders have made a mess of things and should get out of the way’."
Find out about the experiences of Annie and Aakash, the UK young journalists, on our blog.
Plan also distributed this document (PDF) on children's right to be heard at climate change negotiations.
Moving forward Plan is continuing to call for decision makers to acknowledge children's input, and provide formal mechanisms for young people to contribute to dialogue on climate change.
Plan is also placing emphasis on the need for full accountability to commitments made regarding mitigation and adaptation, with monitoring systems incorporating children's views.
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