The main component of the study, for which research was undertaken from July 2010 to February 2011, focused on understanding how the 3F crisis impacted on different areas of young people’s lives and development, mediated through macro- and meso-level processes at the national level. More specifically, the study explored vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms in different dimensions of young people’s lives: employment, education, health, and emotional and social wellbeing. The study also analysed some of the key policies and programmes that have been developed to improve the situation of young people – including in relation to the impacts of the crisis – examining whether young people interviewed perceived any benefits from them. This research consisted of four to five rounds of participatory and qualitative data collection in each country, with young people living in the capital city and surrounding urban and peri-urban areas.

A smaller component of the research, conducted between February and March 2011, explored how climate change impacts on young people’s livelihoods, economic opportunities and other aspects of their development, and how they mitigate and adapt to these impacts. This component drew on the vulnerabilities approach used for the main component and the same peer-to-peer methodology was used. In this case, young researchers conducted fieldwork in two rural areas in Ghana and Vietnam that experience severe weather events, triggered by climate change. Its objective was to get a different view of the impact of macro-level shocks on youth, as well as contributing to the limited literature on climate change and youth.

Paola Pereznieto with Christiana Gbedemah, Paula Monjane, Gisa Roesen, Caroline Harper and Nicola Jones