Climate change has begun to change our world in unprecedented
ways. We are already witnessing increasingly frequent and severe
floods, droughts and changes in precipitation as well as heat and
water stress. These phenomena are having, and will continue to
have, a devastating impact on living conditions in many parts of the
world, particularly where many of the world’s poorest and most
vulnerable children live.
Children will suffer disproportionately from climate change and
growing environmental risks:
• The youngest will have to contend with the immediate and
life-threatening dangers of climate-related disasters, food
insecurity, rising air pollution, increased risk of vector-borne
diseases, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases and
malnutrition.1,2 Evidence is increasingly showing that these
risks can have a markedly detrimental impact on a child’s early
development.3,4
• Children, especially young children, live their lives at a faster
pace than adults. Consequently, anything harmful in the
environment is bound to have a relatively greater impact on
them. For example, young children breathe at twice the rate
of adults. In polluted environments, their risk of respiratory
infections, such as pneumonia, or conditions such as asthma,
is likely to be far higher than for adults.5, 6, 7
• Children’s vulnerability to vector-borne diseases such as
dengue, malaria, and diseases associated with poor water
quality, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene practices, such
as diarrhoeal diseases, is also far higher than adults. In 2015,
malaria is estimated to lead to 438,000 deaths, of which more
than two-thirds are children under 5 years of age.8 Children are
also more susceptible to undernutrition. Diarrhoeal diseases
are a major cause of under-five mortality, and are estimated to
result in 530,000 deaths in 2015 alone.9
• Some of the most dense child population areas in the world
are likely to suffer significantly from flooding, drought and
water and heat stress. These include parts of South Asia,
particularly coastal South Asia and south of the Himalayas;
the Mekong Delta; the Nile river basin; the Pacific Islands and
other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) across the world;
Equatorial Africa; and the Pacific coast of Latin America. Due
to several major global trends, including demographic and
migration trends, more and more people are living in disaster-
prone areas and exposed to weather extremes.10 Those
with the highest exposure to climate risks are also likely to
experience repetitive crises, which also makes it more difficult
for poor families and children to recover. Even without climate
change, the challenges ahead would stand to be enormous;
climate change will significantly compound these challenges.
• Children, particularly young children are reliant on adults for
their survival and development: whatever happens to adults
often has a devastating impact on children too. Besides the
direct risks of climate change, children are also affected when
climate change hits their parents and other caregivers, such
as loss of livelihoods and crop productivity. Moreover, when
climate change sparks conflict over dwindling resources,
children again pay the price for adults’ actions.
Today’s children will live longer than most of the people
who read this report. The impacts of climate change are
only just beginning, and will likely continue to worsen over
the lifetime of todays children, and future generations.
The decisions made now will have greatest impact on our
children.
The number of children potentially exposed to climate risks and
their effects is alarming. Currently, over half a billion 7children are
living in areas with extremely high levels of flood occurrence, and
nearly 160 million live in areas of high or extremely high drought
severity. Most of them live in some of the world’s poorest
countries with the least capacity to manage these environmental
risks.
Strengthening the resilience of the poorest children and families
to not only absorb these changes, but also adapt and transform,
will be critical. It will also require, as part of these efforts, that
we address the profound social and economic inequities that
drive the ways in which many children will be so deeply impacted
by the climate crisis.
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