Even though climate change impacts are already being felt, young generations will be most severely affected. At the same time, they are excluded from decision-making and from the debates around adaptive measures. Though the young are assumed to be more environmentally aware and education curricula in Europe pays particular attention to climate change, not much is known about how they perceive this challenge and what are their views on how to address it.
This presentation analyses the results of a set of workshops conducted with school children (aged 9-10 years old and 14-15 years old) in three different locations in Portugal. The aim of the workshops was to promote the engagement of young people in disaster risk management, focusing on climate-related extreme weather events. The discussions and activities revolved around the concepts of climate change, impacts, mitigation and adaptation, risk, vulnerability and resilience. Particular attention was payed to national and local risks (flooding, heat and cold waves, storms, forest fires, landslides, tornados, cliff collapse). Participants were then asked to come up with suggestions for increasing resilience to climate change impacts and to communicate them to decision makers and stakeholders.
The presentation is based on the project CUIDAR Cultures of Disaster Resilience amongst Children and Young People, a European CSA project (funded by the Horizon 2020) that aims: (1) to understand children's experiences of disasters; the impact on their lives, their resilience and the longer-term recovery process; (2) To discover how children can best be supported in disasters and how to enhance their resilience to future emergencies; (3) To influence emergency policy and practice to better meet the needs and build the resilience of children and young people. This project is led by the University of Lancaster (UK) and involves teams in five European countries.