The Eastern and Southern Africa region is facing increasingly severe and frequent climate shocks droughts, floods, and extreme weather events that disrupt essential services such as food, water, education, and shelter. These disruptions disproportionately impact women and girls, who shoulder the majority of unpaid care work, while undermining child well-being and resilience. Despite the critical role of childcare in both development and adaptive capacity, there is limited understanding of how climate change interacts with childcare systems, care work, and gendered vulnerabilities. This knowledge gap hampers the design and implementation of climate adaptation strategies that effectively integrate care and gender considerations.
The Planetary Care and Child Care study led by World Bank’s Eastern and Southern Africa Social Policy team, seeks to address these intersecting challenges by examining the impacts of climate change on childcare systems, care work, and gender equality across Eastern and Southern Africa, with primary data collection in Madagascar, Mauritius, and Mozambique. Funded by the World Bank’s Early Learning Partnership Trust Fund and implemented by DT Global, the study uses a mixed-methods approach to generate both quantitative and qualitative insights across four core pillars: child well-being, gender, climate, and income/economics.
The project is designed to assess gendered and intersectional vulnerabilities, review relevant policies, and identify innovative, gender-transformative solutions for integrating care into climate adaptation strategies. Key activities include collecting and analyzing primary data, producing evidence-based reports, policy briefs, care-sensitive climate resilience guidelines, and training materials on gender-responsive, care-sensitive climate adaptation. By centering care in climate adaptation planning, the project aims to provide actionable recommendations to support both child well-being and equitable climate resilience in the region.
The primary objective of the Planetary Care and Child Care Study is to gather evidence and provide empirical recommendations that can be adopted by policymakers within governments, the development community, and other actors when developing climate change adaptation initiatives. To achieve this, we will deliver the following:
