Climate Change and Child Protection – An Introduction to M’lup Russey’s Innovative Programme

Climate change is a problem that affects everyone in the world, but the aftermath of disasters and crises hit the world’s most vulnerable people the hardest. M’lup Russey may not specialise in environmentalist aid or development, but climate change affects the lives of children and vulnerable families in Cambodia in many ways. From 1996 to 2020, Cambodia experienced 1,375 droughts, 3,681 severe floods and 1,917 hurricanes. As a result, 1,857 hospitals, 4,761 houses, around 1,000 schools, along with 3,000,000 hectares of crops were destroyed. In total, 1,292 people lost their lives due to these climate crises. As well as natural disasters like flooding and famine, Cambodia’s environment also suffers from polluted water and unexploded ordinance in the form of landmines left by past war and conflict. In 2016, Cambodia place eighth in the Global Risk Index, making it one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change in the world.

Vulnerable families living in Cambodia’s rural areas are one of the most impacted groups when it comes to disasters and climate change. Children under five are among the most vulnerable to death from environmental hazards like drowning, as well as poor health in the aftermath of a disaster. These after-effects and risks include the threat of illness and death due to malnutrition from the failure of crops and depletion of fisheries; as well as the threat of water-borne diseases from the scarcity of clean water after floods and droughts. The unexploded landmines that litter Cambodia’s rural areas are a threat to human wellbeing as they prevent people from accessing land and safe drinking water, as well as cause life changing injuries and death if unknowingly stepped on. All of these risks are life threatening and have the most impact on the children in communities.

One impact of climate change that threatens children is family separation due to parental migration. When floods and droughts hit the rural areas of Cambodia, such as farm land, parents cannot sustain their families either nutritionally or financially, and migrate to other areas to find work. When parents migrate, children are left alone and are at risk of dropping out of school, and becoming neglected, abused, trafficked, exploited or forced into child labour. This is the cross-cutting issue M’lup Russey intends to mitigate as climate change puts children at risk of abandonment, illness and death.

At the National Government level, the Climate Change Adaptation Project was created and being worked on by 14 Cambodian Government Ministries and institutions and will run until 2030. From 2014 to 2023, they were working under the Cambodian Climate Change Strategic Plan, a national framework as to how to respond to climate change issues, which had three goals:
1) To reduce people’s vulnerability to climate change by helping communities to adapt and overcome the difficulties.
2) Promoting low-carbon development and cleaner, greener technologies.
3) Raising public awareness and encouraging community participation to act as a response to climate crises.
The strategic plan document contains eight medium and long-term objectives, the sixth point being relevant to M’lup Russey’s work and own strategies: “Promote adaptive social protection and participatory approaches in reducing loss and damage due to climate change.”

M’lup Russey works with Churches and local authorities to encourage participation of community members to assess and identify the issues like social protection, family and child welfare within the community to help them improve their situations as part of Disaster Management Committees, while also helping to coordinate the distribution of emergency resources to families affected by climate change as well as encouraging child protection training within communities to help keep their children safe in a crisis. MRO helps rural communities to take action in emergency situations, and supports them to help the most vulnerable families to build resilience for these times of hardship, providing them with the means to adapt to the aftermath of a crisis brought on by climate change, and prevent the felt need to send their children away to an orphanage.