In 2024, the planet experienced its hottest year on record. It marked the first time global temperatures exceeded the critical 1.5°C threshold in a full calendar year. The warming trend, which continues in 2025, poses growing risks to children and families around the world, especially those in vulnerable communities already facing the effects of climate-related disasters. As a recent groundbreaking report by SOS Children’s Villages International makes clear, the climate crisis is one of the world’s major causes of child-family separation. According to UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI), nearly half of the world’s children – approximately one billion – live in extremely high-risk countries.
Environmental hazards caused by the climate crisis, such as severe drought and floods, tear families apart because they magnify existing levels of poverty and put intense pressure on already weak social protection systems. As families are forced to migrate or are displaced, the risk of children losing parental care increases. Schools are often destroyed, and displaced children can end up in areas where they cannot enroll in school, or no school is available.
The climate crisis is also driving a disturbing new pattern: environmental hazards striking in rapid succession. In parts of the Horn of Africa, for instance, communities have faced prolonged droughts followed very soon afterwards by extended periods of flooding.
Families resort to desperate measures
Trapped in poverty, families resort to desperate measures. Child marriage is common, as parents ‘marry off’ daughters as a way of reducing the number of mouths to feed. But as Dr. Dimbil Deqa, SOS Children’s Villages Regional Emergency Response Programs Advisor for Eastern and Southern Africa points out, this can in turn lead to other “harmful practices, including female genital mutilation. A lot of girls are being cut in unhygienic and unsafe conditions by someone with limited experience. Many girls are bleeding to death, and they might not even make it to hospital.”
A collapse in agricultural productivity is often an immediate impact of natural hazards. Families can no longer provide for themselves, let alone sell their produce to others. They may then have to undertake the long trek to safety in a town or city, which can be hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. Some of the children will never arrive, as the journey, most likely on foot, may mean two or three days without food or water.
But the challenges don’t stop there, as assistance now must be provided by Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps for this new influx of families. IDP camps can help with some medical treatment and food distribution, but with families – often unvaccinated – arriving from all over a country or region, disease outbreaks such as cholera are not uncommon.
Flooding forces farms to be abandoned
Dr. Deqa recalls an encounter with a family that had undertaken one such journey. After flooding forced them to abandon their farm in the Bay region of southern Somalia, the parents and five children walked 80 kilometers to the nearest town. None of them had ever been to the town before, yet the father now had to contemplate how to earn a new living for his family – one of whom, their newborn son, had contracted neonatal sepsis in the very IDP camp that was designed to protect him.
“They've had this small, happy family life in the country,” says Dr. Deqa, “But now that's gone. They've survived the crisis, but it has completely upended their existence, their way of life, their future, what they expected from the world. It's a crisis within a crisis.”
Between 2022 and 2023 alone, SOS Children’s Villages responded to 30 climate-induced disasters across the globe, including droughts and floods in Africa, Asia and Latin America. A major focus was the floods in Pakistan that affected 30 million people, as was the prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa.
SOS Children’s Villages providing immediate support
Our broad set of responses center around the welfare of children. In Brazil, 42 children, six young people and their caregivers at the SOS Children’s Villages in Porto Alegre were relocated to a shelter the day before floodwaters overran the village in early May 2024. Later in the year, SOS Children’s Villages in Brazil built 15 homes for some of the affected families.
In Kenya, floods displaced more than 280,000 people and caused the loss of nearly 10,000 livestock. There was substantial damage to agricultural lands, infrastructure, businesses, schools and healthcare facilities. SOS Children’s Villages responded with food assistance and cash transfers to hundreds of families in Kenya. Medical outreach clinics were established, and the children’s village in Kisumu set up a temporary safe center for children who were either lost or separated from their families.
But empowering communities, particularly children themselves, helps to make those facing the worst of the climate crisis more resilient. For instance, as part of Youth Power, a programme that supports young changemakers across the globe, SOS Children’s Villages supports over 1,000 young people as they lead 40 climate and environment-focused youth-led initiatives. With a reach of approximately 3,500 people, the programme allows these initiatives to grow and scale up by sparking funding, and through training and mentoring.
Long-term agricultural programmes help soil preservation and water conservation
More specifically, as many of the 2.8 million IDPs in Somalia previously worked in agriculture, their displacement has shattered agricultural production and threatened the population’s survival. Soil preservation and water conservation are both major challenges, which is why SOS Children’s Villages’ programmes in Somalia emphasize the importance of strategic and non-corrosive agricultural practices. These incorporate youth employability, green-skilling and income generation, as young people run the farms.
“By introducing climate-smart farming technologies, we are not only helping communities in Somalia withstand climate shocks but also empowering them to rebuild their livelihoods sustainably,” says Bashir Said, programme director at SOS Children's Villages in Somalia.
The Bonkay Smart Farms project in Baidoa, Somalia, for examples, reached a major milestone this year, as local farmers using climate-smart techniques harvested 115 kg of fresh eggplant for the first time. Supporting 200 households, this initiative is helping families move beyond survival toward sustainable growth and self-sufficiency.
“These innovations are crucial in tackling hunger and poverty, ensuring families have the resources they need to thrive despite the challenges of climate change,” Mr. Said adds.
Likewise, in Zambia, SOS Children's Villages supports farmers in the development of sustainable and water-saving hydroponic cultivation. Families no longer need to fear either drought or heavy rainfall, or to rely on pesticides. Food insecurity has been eliminated. Young people are learning these new methods, an unrivalled preparation for the green jobs of the future.
Too few UN member states center children in climate action plans
But while involving and focusing on children and young people is part of the solution, environmental action is not their responsibility. Moreover, the fact remains that the highest-risk places on Earth contribute least to the causes of the climate crisis. According to UNICEF’s CCRI, the 33 extremely high-risk countries emit less than 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions; the 10 most extremely high-risk countries just 0.5 percent.
In 2019, all UN member states recognized in that year’s Resolution on the Rights of the Child that the climate crisis results in the unnecessary separation of children from their families. Yet a 2021 study by UNICEF showed that only 34 percent of the new and revised Nationally Determined Contributions – countries’ climate action plans – were child-sensitive.
For this to change, there needs to be an urgent and greater investment in effective child protection mechanisms. Practical assistance is essential, such as helping families to develop new skills to secure alternative sources of income. Social service provision – in health, nutrition, education, water and sanitation, housing and child protection – must also take environmental considerations into account. Social protection measures, such as cash transfers, school meals and support for families accessing services, all help alleviate economic hardships caused by the climate crisis.
Local communities must be central to climate risk management
Early warning systems, as part of climate risk management, enable better preparation for environmental hazards. As Dr. Deqa makes clear, local communities must be central to this process. “It's important to contextualize the terminology we use, so we can be clear if it’s relevant for a specific community. We like to plan for communities on their behalf and come up with big initiatives and responses, but it's them who really need to be involved.”
More broadly, working directly with children can help achieve environmentally sustainable societies. Developing green skills for young people is essential for a successful transition to the green economy, as it will boost youth employability in the future world of work. This is particularly important for young people leaving alternative care, as they rely on employment not only as a source of income, but as a way to overcome poverty and to lead a life with dignity.
By helping to tackle the climate crisis, the world can break the intergenerational and cyclical factors that put children at risk of losing parental care. Instead of neglect, abandonment and despair, children can grow up with the bonds they need to become their strongest selves in a healthy world.