Session 4: How Can Investments in Early Childhood Help Communities Build Resilience to Climate Change?
Capita and This is Planet Ed (the Aspen Institute) have co-convened the Early Years Climate Action Task Force to draft the first-ever U.S. Early Years Climate Action Plan. The plan will recommend ways the country can help young children, ages zero to 8, flourish in the face of climate change. It will be published in late 2023.
Climate change is a direct threat to our children’s health, safety, and ability to flourish. Yet experts in child development and climate have been slow to join forces to address this crisis. We are proud to bring together experts from both worlds to share, learn, and unite their efforts.
This listening session, the fourth of 6, explored the effects of climate change on children, families, and the early child care system. After presentations from four expert panelists, the session opened up for questions.
The experts:
Mario Cardona , White House Domestic Policy Council
Adrián Cerezo, Center for Early Years and Sustainable Development
Victoria Chavez Barriga, Bernard van Leer Foundation
Joe Fretwell, Low Income Investment Fund
Susan Gilmore, North Bay Children's Center
Investing in early childhood not only protects young children. It can also help promote climate resilience and even mitigation by promoting sustainable development more broadly.
The panel opened by reframing the discussion of children and climate. Young children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change—an idea that is easy to grasp. Cerezo called attention to a less obvious concept: focusing on early childhood development can also promote resilience to climate change and, under the right circumstances, even help mitigate it.
Addressing the needs of young children builds their overall resilience, the ability to recover from setbacks or hardships. More resilient children will fare better in the face of climate change. Focusing on early childhood also helps achieve the broad sustainable development goals outlined by the United Nations in 2015. Communities and countries that reduce poverty, change their consumption patterns, use cleaner energy, and achieve the other sustainable development goals will also mitigate climate change because they will reduce their green house gas emissions.
There are caveats; achieving these goals is a complex and difficult process and the focus on early childhood must be backed by adequate investments, for instance. But the general principle holds: Everyone benefits—faster and more thoroughly—when the needs of young children are met. Investing in early childhood is “a cost-effective, comprehensive, immediate, and enduring path to achieving climate resilience and climate adaptation,” Cerezo said. Or, as Fretwell put it, “what’s good for our youngest neighbors is good for all of us.”
A task force member asked: Is it too simplistic to say that “to build a healthier planet we need to begin by building healthier children?” Chavez responded, “It’s not simplistic. It’s our starting point.”
The U.S. child care system lacks the resources to respond to the climate crisis, leaving children and families at physical and emotional risk
When climate disasters hit, the infrastructure that supports children and families collapses. “Everything just closes down,” Gilmore said. She described the impacts of disasters on North Bay Children's Center (NBCC), the child care network she runs in northern California. The network had to shut centers multiple times because of wildfires, dangerous air quality, and power shutoffs.
Child care centers act as hubs that connect children, families, and teachers with resources to cope with disasters. But NBCC, like the nation’s child care system as a whole, has trouble responding to and preparing for these events. Child care programs run on thin margins. It’s hard for them to secure funding for infrastructure improvements, for sustainable practices, or for training teachers, who are essentially acting as first responders during catastrophes.
NBCC had to create its own solutions to stay up and running and keep children safe. Staff established systems to quickly connect families to financial and emotional support, using cell phones, social media, and an app to communicate and provide resources. A new facility under construction will include filtration capabilities similar to those of hospitals and medical offices, a response to wildfires and COVID. Outdoor play areas will include protections from extreme heat. These features add significant costs to the construction budget.
Cities need to “think babies” to create environments that nurture and support all ages
More than 1 billion children live in cities, and the number will grow. Chavez described the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s work to help cities provide safe and nurturing environments for children and support their caregivers. The foundation approaches this work by asking, if you could experience the city at a height of 95 centimeters [about 37.5 inches]—the height of a healthy three-year-old—what would you change?
Young children’s experience of city living affects their development. Climate change threatens that experience in myriad ways: poor health, poverty, disrupted education, displacement. Governments and policy makers must prioritize children’s needs as they plan and implement cities’ responses to climate change. Chavez cited “think babies” as an “inclusive design principle for climate resilience” that will protect not only the youngest children, but all city residents.
Focusing on early childhood could help overcome resistance to climate actions in the United States
Some countries are beginning to link early childhood and climate, including Kiribati and several other Pacific Island nations such as Fiji, whose policies in both arenas reference the connection of the two sectors. In the U.S., linking child care and early childhood will be harder because both policy arenas are underfunded and undervalued. In addition, given the current political context, it’s unlikely that the U.S. will be a major player in international climate efforts. Cardona did note that the current U.S. administration is addressing both climate and early childhood in initiatives including the Inflation Reduction Act and its commitment to providing more resources for child care providers during disasters, among other initiatives.
Cerezo felt that approaching climate policy through the lens of early childhood development could make it more palatable to U.S. policy makers. “It creates the possibility of promoting policy in the U.S. that is not directly climate policy—it is human development policy, early childhood development policy, that in the end will have a positive impact in the way we perform as a country on sustainable development and on climate and greenhouse gas reduction.”
He suggested two main avenues:
Collaboration between environmental organizations and parents to create pressure on Congress: Environmental groups can work with parents of young children on advocacy for Congressional action on mitigation. Members of Congress who ignore environmental NGOs might find it harder to ignore a bloc of parents making a case for action on behalf of their vulnerable children.
Concerted, collaborative efforts to elevate young children in state and federal policy: Early years and environmental advocates should join forces to press for executive and legislative action on reducing carbon. Working with academia, they should develop a framework for ensuring that the agenda for early childhood avoids creating policies that are good for children but not for the environment (for instance, by promoting carbon-intensive development).
How to invest in early childhood to protect children and fight the effects of climate change
In Cerezo’s words, “For early childhood programs to build a sustainable future and climate resilience, they have to be well financed, of high quality, equitable, and delivered at the right time of life.” What reforms would help the early childhood sector live up to this promise? Gilmore and Fretwell had several recommendations for improving the ability of childcare to protect children from climate hazards and promote their healthy development:
Support the childcare industry
Treat child care as the essential industry it is: Child care is essential for the economic well-being of families. Worsening weather threatens the ability of this vital service to stay open. When child care is disrupted, families suffer extreme stress; often parents miss work, creating a ripple effect on the entire community. Emergency plans must include the child care industry, just as they include schools. Community and economic development strategies must prioritize families’ need for reliable child care.
Give child care more flexibility to respond to disasters, including through regulatory relief: Child care centers are hampered by rigid regulations that prevent them from responding nimbly to disasters. This inflexibility makes it hard for centers to keep classrooms open or reopen them quickly—at a time when children urgently need continuity, familiar routines, and safe, nurturing environments. Gilmore explained that “regulations that are critical during our normal day-to-day operations become an obstacle in achieving that goal.” She gave an example: her network was asked to open a classroom for the children of firefighters unable to work because their child care had shut down. The state licensing board declined because the classroom would not be licensed.
Give child care more resources, including investments in infrastructure and technical assistance: Fretwell summed up the problem: “Until we get the business model of child care right in the U.S, it will be always hard for providers to take on debt and complete expensive facilities projects.” Gilmore summed up the solution: “Our nation’s fragile child care system needs more resources to navigate through climate-related events.”
State and local economic initiatives should ensure that child care facilities and workers are prepared for harsh weather and able to maintain operations. Fretwell cited the need for standalone resources for child care facilities and infrastructure. Another option is to pair funding with existing community development and housing programs. In areas of concentrated poverty, the low-income housing tax credit can be used to help pay for a community service facility, which could be a child care center in an affordable housing development. States should create incentives or priorities for developers to propose such projects.
Public investments in early childhood must include physical facilities, with an eye toward climate change. This is happening in California: the state’s child care infrastructure grant program and urban forestry act will infuse nearly $400 million into child care facilities over the next several years, with priority on sustainable practices and resilience. Financial support should be accompanied by technical assistance in completing complicated projects.
Promote mixed-use development
Reduce barriers to mixed-use development to encourage more child care centers where the need is greatest: States and localities should reconsider the zoning practices and land use policies that prevent mixed-use development, so that child care providers can work with multifamily housing developers and affordable housing projects to co-locate services. Fretwell urged reintroduction of the Build Housing With Care Act, which would provide $500 million to help build child care centers in affordable housing developments and facilitate partnerships between the developments and providers.
Consider the location of child care centers as part of broader local and regional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: Mixed-use development could also help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with child care. For instance, centers in low-density areas promote more driving and more emissions. In denser areas, those emissions may be lower. Locating child care near other commercial developments and housing can therefore help communities meet their planning and climate goals.
Identify and prioritize communities most at risk
Fretwell urged the early childhood and climate fields to be “collaborative and intentional” in using data to identify communities with the biggest needs in child care and affordable housing and the greatest risk from climate change. Typically, communities with the deepest inequities—racial, socioeconomic, or geographic—face the most intense climate risk. They should be prioritized for public investments.