Shifting The Narrative Summary

Thomas Tanner’s article Shifting the Narrative: Child – led Responses to Climate Change and Disasters in El Salvador and the Philippines seeks to examine children’s agency, as well as, their ability to participate in change and preventing disasters in the majority world. Tanner emphasizes that atmospheric greenhouse gases are placing a large pressure on human kind to adapt, alluding to a change in our social, economic, and political spheres (339). Tanner stresses for the active participation in efforts to, “prevent, prepare for, cope with, and adapt to climate change and extreme events” (340). This paper provides researchers with a pathway to inform critical understandings between children and adults, stressing agency and power within youth.

The rise in mortality rates of children has contributed to this dialogue, creating a need to safety and security for this particular social group (Tanner 340). In connection to the article Do you guys hate Aucklanders too?’’ Youth: voicing difference from the rural heartland there is a pressing notion to realize the power of children’s agency, as demonstrated through the use of focus groups to hear voices of ‘othered’ children and youth (Smith et al. 172). The uses of such groups are also demonstrated through multiple participatory models for the children, disasters and climate change interface. Community based groups in Tanner’s article are just one of the many ways children can organize themselves in light of their involvement in development processes (347). However, not all areas around the world embrace child-centred inclusion in spaces that assume such adult geared dominance. This article fails to include alternative methods for the implementation of institutional dynamics, if introduced in places that do not entirely agree with the admittance of youth in crucial areas of protection and safety. This is due to socially constructed ideologies of innocence and