Summary
El Niño 2026 is highly likely to intensify extreme weather, hitting hardest in already fragile, crisis-affected contexts. Children will bear the brunt through cascading impacts on health, education, protection, and lifelong well-being, alongside significant and under-recognised loss and damage. This research will generate evidence on how these impacts unfold and how to reduce impacts and loss and damage for children, using El Niño as an entry point to inform more effective design, targeting, and scaling of preparedness, anticipatory action (AA) and adaptation. It will examine what works in AA, pinpointing effective interventions, and how systems can deliver timely, child-centred responses at scale and contribute to the evidence base for policy, financing and practice on how AA can reduce climate-related risks, losses and damages for children and strengthen resilience to future shocks.
Save the Children is seeking proposals from qualified consultants to deliver this piece of research.
1. Background
As of June 2026, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms with high confidence that El Niño conditions are developing, with an estimated 80% likelihood during June-August and a greater than 90% probability of persisting into late 2026 (WMO 2026). Fuelled by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific and arriving amid record global temperatures, this event is expected to significantly alter global temperature and rainfall patterns, increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather beyond what ENSO intensity alone would suggest, including droughts, floods, and heatwaves.
What makes this El Niño particularly exceptional is that it is unfolding within a context of compounding and intersecting global crises. Recurrent climate shocks have already eroded coping capacities, while ongoing conflict, displacement and fragile governance systems continue to strain public services. At the same time, global geopolitical tensions, including the Iran crisis, are driving fuel price volatility and rising fertiliser costs, further increasing food production costs and weakening already fragile food systems. These overlapping pressures are projected to push an additional 44-45 million people into food insecurity globally, with the heaviest impacts in countries already experiencing protracted crises. In such contexts, even a moderate El Niño is likely to trigger disproportionately severe and cascading impacts.
For children this translates into multi-dimensional and reinforcing risks such as increased malnutrition and disease, disrupted education, reduced access to essential services, and heightened protection risks such as child labour, early marriage, and displacement. Impacts risk becoming long-term and irreversible, with consequences for children’s development, well-being and resilience. For example, the 2015–2016 El Niño drove widespread impacts across sectors impacted an estimated 60 million people, with around one million children requiring treatment for severe acute malnutrition, widespread school disruption, significant crop losses, large-scale displacement, and increased outbreaks of climate sensitive diseases (UNICEF, 2016).
This context demands urgent early action, leveraging anticipatory approaches to reduce immediate risks while strengthening systems to absorb future shocks. This requires a shift from reactive response to anticipatory, risk-informed action. Without this shift, predictable crises like El Niño will continue to drive avoidable and compounding impacts on children’s development, wellbeing, and future resilience.
Save the Children is prioritising this shift in preparation for the 2026 El Niño by scaling child-centred, locally-led AA, alongside a dedicated research effort that will generate evidence to demonstrate impacts for children and inform more effective and targeted responses – assessing what works, why, for whom, and how approaches can be scaled.
2. Rationale and evidence gaps
Despite a growing momentum around AA and advances in climate forecasting, critical evidence gaps continue to constrain effective responses to predictable shocks like El Niño, particularly for children. Current analysis remains largely shaped by macro-level and sectoral perspectives (e.g. food systems, GDP impacts) and rarely include child-sensitive impact analysis, which tend to examine impacts in isolation. This limits understanding of how climate shocks translate into inter-connected, real-life outcomes for children across sectors, including health, education and protection. Existing research remains heavily concentrated on health impacts, while other critical domains of children’s well-being
are comparatively underexplored (Mohamed et al, 2025).
While evidence increasingly shows that AA can reduce the impacts of climate shocks, humanitarian systems remain largely reactive. Much AA has been undertaken on a pilot basis, focused on supporting agency systems and preparedness rather than enabling locally-led and community owned decision-making and action. Few AA initiatives have been child-focused or integrated within development or adaptation programming. There is still limited understanding of how to operationalise AA at scale – particularly for children – across different contexts, sectors, and types of predictable crises, including large-scale and compound events such as El Niño. Much of the existing evidence focuses on short-term or sector-specific outcomes, with less attention given to integrated, child-centred and system-level approaches, including how early warning systems effectively translate into timely, accessible and actionable responses for children and youth.
In addition, important evidence gaps remain regarding the extent to which AA can contribute to longer-term resilience and adaptive capacity. While AA is increasingly framed as a means of linking humanitarian action, climate adaptation and development, there is limited empirical evidence on how anticipatory interventions influence vulnerability reduction, adaptive capacities, and resilience outcomes over time.
In parallel, climate-induced loss and damage affecting children remains insufficiently captured. This includes not only economic losses (such as damage to homes, schools, health facilities, and livelihoods) but also significant non-economic losses, including impacts on education, psychosocial well-being, identity, and social cohesion. These dimensions remain largely under-measured and underrepresented in climate policy and financing debates (UNICEF and Save the Children 2025), particularly in the context of large-scale climate phenomena such as El Niño.
Collectively, these gaps create a critical blind spot, constraining the ability of policymakers, donors, practitioners, and national and local actors to anticipate risks, act early, allocate resources effectively, and design initiatives that sustainably protect children in the face of escalating climate risks.
3. Research aim and objectives
This research aims to generate actionable, child-centred evidence to inform more effective AA, preparedness, adaptation and responses to the 2026/26 El Niño event1 and similar climate shocks. The research is intended to inform programming and decision-making by governments, local and national actors, NGOs, donors and multilateral organisations, while contributing to wider policy and financing discussions on child-centred AA, resilience and loss and damage. It will document the loss and damage experienced by children in the context of El Niño and cumulative shocks and examine how AA can reduce the impacts on children, as well as avert, minimise and address loss and damage.
The research is designed as a phased study that reflects both the anticipated progression of El Niño impacts and the time required to assess resilience and adaptation outcomes. Phase I, conducted in 2026, will focus on the immediate impacts of El Niño on children, together with an assessment of the effectiveness of anticipatory actions and early responses in reducing risks, losses and damages. While this phase will identify potential pathways to resilience and adaptation, it is not expected to generate sufficient evidence to assess longer-term resilience outcomes directly. Subject to additional funding, Phase II extending the research beyond 2026, would enable analysis of longer-term and secondary impacts, as well as the contribution of anticipatory action to resilience, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability reduction for children, households and communities.
The research seeks to answer the following specific questions:
- What are the immediate and emerging impacts of El Niño on children?
a) What impact does El Niño have on children across the most affected sectors in the selected contexts?
b) What losses and damages do children experience as a result of El Niño and compounding shocks?
c) Which children and contexts are at greatest risk?
d) How do El Niño impacts interact with other climate, economic and conflict-related stressors?
2. How can anticipatory action effectively reduce the impacts experienced by children (including through actions that are timely, adequately financed, appropriately targeted, inclusive, locally led, and contextually appropriate to reduce risks, losses and damages for children)?
a) Which AA actions, modalities, and interventions are effective in mitigating negative impacts and loss and damage for children?
b) What governance, coordination/capacity factors enable or constrain national and local actors in leading/sustaining effective anticipatory action?
c) Which children benefit the most from interventions (e.g. age, gender, vulnerability)?
d) What affects – or constrains – the effectiveness of interventions and how do these vary across contexts?
e) How do different components of AA systems, including risk analysis, early warning, trigger mechanisms, pre-agreed action plans, financing, targeting and delivery, interact to shape outcomes for children? What are the key bottlenecks that constrain the timeliness, adequacy, inclusiveness, effectiveness and scale of AA?
3. (Second phase, subject to extension of research): How do the impacts of El Niño evolve over time, and to what extent does anticipatory action contribute to reduced vulnerability, resilience and strengthened adaptation capacity for children, households and communities?
a) To what extent do the impacts, losses and damages associated with El Niño persist beyond the initial shock period?
b) What secondary and longer-term consequences emerge for children across education, health, protection, wellbeing and livelihoods?
c) To what extent, and through what pathways, does AA contribute to longer-term adaptive capacity and resilience for children, households and communities?
d) What lessons can inform the integration of anticipatory action, adaptation and longer-term development programming?
4. Methodology
We are open to consultant(s) proposing a methodological approach that they feel will be able to answer the above research objectives. There are, however, several components which we would like to see prioritised within proposed approaches:
a) An evidence review, which examines the impact of El Niño on a global and historical scale and the most effective AA approaches to address these impacts. This will help provide the context for the in-depth research to be undertaken within Somalia and Bangladesh.
b) A comparative research design, across several different contexts within two study countries (Somalia and Bangladesh), that examines the impact of El Niño on children and assesses the effectiveness of AA in reducing these impacts (see section 5). As outlined in section 3, the focus of this research should be on the immediate impact of El Niño and the effectiveness of anticipatory action and early response measures in reducing risks and losses and damages.
c) Use of mixed-methods approaches. This will entail collecting primary data from affected populations and communities in select areas and as well collecting and analysing secondary data, including from SCI Country Offices, which we can facilitate access to. The use of participatory and child-centred approaches, in which children, caregivers, and local actors will be actively engaged in data collection, is desirable.
d) Assessment of effectiveness. We would like the methodology to examine the effectiveness of AA systems (e.g. reduction in impacts, losses and negative coping strategies) and who benefits (broken down, for example, by age, gender, vulnerability, geography). This should include consideration of timeliness, financing, targeting, adequacy, inclusiveness, and the role of local actors in planning and delivery. As described in section 3, the focus of this research should be on an exploration of the effectiveness of the first phase of the response; a second phase of research (subject to securing additional funds) would allow a more comprehensive assessment of effectiveness over a longer timeframe.
e) Systems and delivery analysis. The study should assess how different components of AA systems (e.g. risk analysis, early warning, triggers, financing, targeting, delivery mechanisms) function in practice, and how they influence timeliness, coverage and effectiveness.
5. Geographic focus
The research should focus on Bangladesh and Somalia, examining the research questions in relation to a limited number of specific contexts within each country (e.g. allowing comparison across rural and urban settings, displacement- and non-displacement-affected communities). These two countries provide strong geographic diversity and encompass a range of climate risks associated with El Nino, including flooding, rainfall variability, drought, heat stress and livelihood impacts. Should further funding be secured, options to expand the research to include additional countries in Phase II would be explored.
We would expect the chosen consultant(s) to work closely with the SCI Country Offices in both cases throughout data collection. We can facilitate introductions as required and provide support to relevant data.
6. Timeframe
The research must be completed by the end of December 2026.
7. Budget
The total available budget for this research is 120,000 USD, inclusive of any local and national taxes.
Save the Children is actively seeking additional funding to expand the total budget. Should additional funds be secured, opportunities to expand the timescale, scope, and geographic focus of the research would be explored with the chosen contractor. At present, however, proposals should be developed in line with the available 120,000 USD and the timescale of the end of 2026. As described in section 3, we acknowledge that some of the research questions would only be feasible to explore should this additional funding be secured and a further phase of research be developed. Nonetheless, we therefore welcome methodological approaches that can generate robust findings within the initial timeframe and budget while also providing a foundation for potential follow-on research.
8. Research outputs
The following research outputs are required:
a) Literature review: a synthesis focused on the global (i.e. broader than the two study countries) and historical perspective (i.e. encompassing previous El Niño events).
b) Evidence report: comparative analysis of key El Niño impacts on children within the two study countries and their specific study contexts, including lessons on how anticipatory action can help reduce these impacts and associated loss and damage. The report should identify promising approaches, operational enablers and constraints, and practical recommendations for strengthening and scaling child-centred anticipatory action. Analysis of longer-term resilience and adaptation outcomes would be explored more fully within a second phase to the research
c) Learning briefs: short, actionable insights during implementation to inform programme adjustments and decision-making (internal to Save the Children).
d) Practical guidance for policy, program design, and scaling: concise, evidence-based recommendations on which approaches appear most promising for different groups of children and contexts; which operational conditions enable or constrain effectiveness; and what should be prioritised to strengthen, scale and better integrate anticipatory action with adaptation, resilience and sector programming.
9. Selection criteria
We are interested in receiving proposals from individual consultants, consultancies, or consortia of consultancies. Should a consortia be proposed, the distinct roles and responsibilities of participating organisations should be made clear, and a clear line of reporting to Save the Children be described.
Technical expertise and subject matter knowledge (weight: high)
Demonstrated experience conducting research and analysis on anticipatory action, disaster risk management, climate adaptation, resilience, and/or humanitarian response (including in fragile and crisis-affected context).
Demonstrated experience conducting research and analysis on the impacts of climate and environmental shocks on children and communities, including across sectors such as food security, nutrition, health, education, child protection and livelihoods.
Demonstrated knowledge of climate risk, climate science and forecast-based approaches, including familiarity with large-scale climate phenomena such as El Nino.
Strong understanding of AA systems and approaches, including risk analysis, forecasting, early warning systems, trigger development, financing, targeting, and delivery mechanisms
Strong understanding of climate-induced loss and damage, including both economic and noneconomic losses affecting children, households and communities.
Track record of working with or researching INGOs and national/local NGOs, including collaboration with national and local organisations and research entities.
Experience assessing programme effectiveness and generating policy- and practice-oriented recommendations for governments, donors, UN agencies, NGOs, and local actors.
Experience working with child-centred, locally-led and community-based approaches is highly desirable.
Good contextual knowledge of, and networks throughout, Somalia and Bangladesh, including experience of having undertaken research within these two countries, is highly desirable.
Research methodology and analytical rigour (weight: high)
Proposed approach for conducting comparative analysis, including multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and cost-benefit assessments.
Experience in designing and applying both qualitative and quantitative research methods in fragile or complex settings.
Ability to ensure contextual understanding and sensitivity to local dynamics, partnerships, and governance issues.
Ability to access and synthesise secondary data and design effective primary data collection tools.
Experience of child-led and participatory approaches to data collection.
Scale (weight: high)
Experience with large, complex, and multi-country research projects.
Team composition, capacity, and availability (weight: high)
Composition of the proposed team, including roles, responsibilities, and relevant qualifications.
Availability and commitment to deliver within the specified timeline, including availability for potential workshops and dissemination activities.
Proven track record of disseminating findings in international policy and practice fora.
Quality of proposal and value for money (weight: medium)
Clarity, coherence, and quality of the technical proposal, including responsiveness to the ToR.
Cost-efficiency without compromising methodological rigour or ethical standards.
How to apply
10. How to apply
Please send the following by email to Nick Ockenden, Senior Trends and Research Advisor at Save the Children Denmark, on nioc@redbarnet.dk. Closing date is 23.59 (CET) on Sunday 27th September 2026. Proposals should be focused on Phase I of the research and should as such reflect the Phase I research questions, budget, and timescale. Applicants are, however, encouraged to include a short paragraph outlining considerations for a potential Phase II, including how the proposed methodology could be built upon to assess longer-term resilience, adaptation and vulnerability outcomes.
CV(s) and cover letter.
Outline of suggested methodology and timeline.
Short description (max. half a page) of how the proposed approach could be extended in a potential Phase II.
Outline of project management roles and responsibilities, including planned reporting processes to Save the Children.
Description of if and how AI would be applied in the work.
Budget, broken down by activity and team member, including day rates.
Example of similar pieces of work.
Proposals should not exceed six pages in length. CVs, cover letter, and the example of previous work are in addition to the page limit. For any questions regarding the Terms of Reference, please reach out to Nick Ockenden.