Welcome to the Toolkit for Youth on Adaptation & Leadership!
Who is this toolkit for?
This toolkit is for young people who want to play their part in promoting climate change adaptation solutions that help safeguard people and the planet. It is designed to help you develop your leadership skills so that you can drive positive change in the face of the climate crisis.
This toolkit uses the terms “youth” and “young people” to refer to people between 15 and 35 years old.
Why is this toolkit necessary?
Climate change is reshaping the world young people have inherited and they will bear the costs in the coming decades. However, young people are often excluded from taking on leadership roles and engaging in decision-making activities related to climate change adaptation.
This toolkit aims to empower young people and equip you with the knowledge and skills for building climate resilience and adaptive capacity in your communities.
What you will learn
The toolkit covers essential materials and offers practical guidance for how you, as a young person, can take part in adaptation policy processes, lead advocacy campaigns, and approach adaptation with an entrepreneurial mindset.
It provides tools for designing and implementing your own climate change adaptation actions so that you can be part of the solution to the climate crisis.
How to use the toolkit
The toolkit includes eight modules.
Understand: Climate Change
Understand: The basics of vulnerability and climate change adaptation
Understand: Vulnerable groups and climate adaptation planning
Learn: Youth-led climate adaptation solutions: African case studies
Develop: Soft skills for youth leadership in adaptation
Engage: Climate adaptation policies: local, national, and international
Design: Adaptation advocacy strategy
Design: Adaptation Action
We recommend you make your way through these modules consecutively.
Each module contains four sections:
Warm Up is the place to start. This provides an overview of the module’s key concepts, based on the latest research and best practices. It highlights tools you can use to apply what you have learned, and develop your leadership skills.
Heat Wave will deepen your understanding. Find links to supporting scientific research, important publications, and tools for exploring and applying key concepts.
Bright Spark is the place to get inspired. Read case studies, watch videos, and listen to podcasts about young climate leaders to get fired up for your own climate change actions!
Cool Down is your last stop. Here, you have space to test your knowledge (with a short quiz) and consider how you can apply what you have learned to your own climate action.
Each module is accompanied by a short video and an infographic that summarizes the key content discussed in this module.
The “Toolkit for Youth on Adaptation & Leadership” is a project under the Global Center on Adaptation Youth Leadership Program, developed by the CARE Climate Justice Center with the financial support of Norad. It came together with input from young people who, like you, are concerned about the impacts of climate change and have faced challenges when advocating and taking adaptation action.
My message to young people is that we have the biggest and the most innovative demographic in the world. We are capable of driving the necessary urgency and groundbreaking solutions to address the climate crisis, because not only does it affect our future, but also the health of the current and the generations to come. And it is our responsibility to act, to work together in the natural, multidisciplinary way that we are, in order to really drive the climate ambition that is needed to protect our communities and our planet.
Omnia El Omrani,
COP27 Youth Envoy from Egypt.