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First paragraph: This report has been compiled as part of the Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) Project for UNICEF based on the work undertaken for the systematic literature review (SLR) in work package (WP2) by Irena Connon (Research Fellow and Co-I) and Lena Dominelli (Social Sciences Lead). The purpose is to provide a descriptive overview of the findings of the Systematic Literature Review from which a Diagram of Linkages between Climate Risk Factors and their Importance for Child Health Outcomes and a Child-Centred Iterative Loop Framework for Action were developed.

This report has been compiled as part of the Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) Project for UNICEF based on the work undertaken for the systematic literature review by Irena Connon and Lena Dominelli. The purpose is to provide a descriptive overview of the findings of the Systematic Literature Review from which a Diagram of Linkages between Climate Risk Factors and their Importance for Child Health Outcomes and a Child-Centred Iterative Loop Framework for Action were developed. This report considers: 1) How and to what extent the existing research and policy literature has examined the interactions and intersections between all the individual, structural, institutional, cultural factors, policies, and wider geographical domains that determine the risks, vulnerabilities, mitigation strategies and outcomes for individuals, including children, experiencing climate change hazards, risks, and related disasters. 2) The extent to which the agency, decision-making capacity, and rights of children, adolescents and young people has been captured within the existing academic research literature.

Ten essentials are presented for community resilience initiatives in the context of achieving a 1.5 °C world: enhance adaptability; take account of shocks and stresses; work horizontally across issues; work vertically across social scales; aggressively reduce carbon emissions; build narratives about climate change; engage directly with futures; focus on climate disadvantage; focus on processes and pathways; and encourage transformations for resilience. Together the essentials highlight that resilience initiatives seeking to retain the status quo will be detrimental when they enable societies to cling to unsustainable activities. Instead, climate resilience initiatives need to be viewed more as a process of transformative social change, where learning, power, inequities and relationships matter. Finally, there is an urgent need for researchers to shift focus away from examining the nature of resilience to accelerating learning about fostering resilience in practice.

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innova-tions, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent.