Although the effects of an uncontrolled global climate warming and the impact over world’s environments and habitats that would follow are well covered by the scientific community, decision-makers should also be concerned over the impact that the unavoidable future we might be walking towards will have over the most vulnerable part of the world’s population: children.
The literature regarding the impact of climate change on younger generations is very well documented and this article aims at bringing further awareness on a relevant matter such as this one by reporting the most significant work on the matter.
Children as most exposed to climate change
The latest report by the International Panel for Climate Change confirmed with an impressive amount of scientific evidence what was already known for the last two decades: global climate warming is bound to have an impact over our lives even if the increase in temperature will be as low as possible(IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021).
According to the 2021 Unicef report “The climate crisis is a child rights crisis”, climate change is expected to have an impact over the lives of one billion children with different events dictated by the global warming such as heatwaves, cyclones, river and coastal flooding, lead and air pollution, water scarcity and airborne diseases (UNICEF, 2021). This hazards often overlaps with each other, meaning that at least 2.2 billion children worldwide is exposed to at least two of the aforementioned hazards (UNICEF, 2021).
Climate change will affect children’s health, food, education, protection and livelihood: it is important to understand that a correlation exists between countries such as Cameroon, Niger, Somalia and Nigeria that are set to face the hardest impact of the climate change and the countries which have a high children vulnerability index.
The reasons of why children will be the more exposed are four, according to Ruppel et al (Ruppel, Roschmann and Ruppel-Schlichting, 2013):
- Children’s stage of psychological development and curiosity is prone to leave them more exposed to hazards
- The main causes of children mortality in underdeveloped countries such as undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections are shown to be susceptible to climatic conditions
- Underdeveloped countries have the highest proportions of young population
- Correlation between civil strife and climate change has been proved
The scope of the harm to younger generations does not only come in terms of environmental damage but also in terms of psychological damage: among the various problems shared by the subject of the work by Burke et al we can find PTSD, depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep disorders, attachment disorders, and substance abuse, problems with emotions regulation, cognition, behavior, language development and poor academic performances (Burke, Sanson and Van Hoorn, 2018) and confirms that children in underdeveloped countries are bound to experience the harshest consequences of climate change.
Therefore, it is undeniable how the literature regarding the potential harm to children is solid and very well proved by both international organizations and scholars. However, in the following part a more elaborate view will be proposed on the matter
Children as agents of change and the current international legal framework around them
Although the effects of climate change have been recognized as harmful for future development of human civilization, the existing perspective does not include the human rights into consideration (Refaat, 2021) 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) does not mention the effect over children directly but since 2008 UN entities cooperated in order to create more engagement between younger generations so to devise more inclusive approaches to climate change, with little results and no direct mention of children.
However, the engagement created by the Fridays For Future movement and by the forefront of young activists such as Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate it seems that the issue of climate change has entered vigorously the public debate and the agendas of some governments (Sabherwal, van der Linden and Swim, 2021), although the results of the COP26 held in Glasgow in the later part of 2021 and the weak agreements reached on the Rome G20 in 2021 proves that not every country is willing to cut its own carbon emissions as soon as possible. In particular, India and the PRC did not agree to reach a neutral footprint before 2070 and 2050 respectively (COP26: India PM Narendra Modi pledges net zero by 2070, 2021) and the agreement reached at the Rome G20 vaguely refers to “the end of the century” (G20 pledge climate action but make few commitments, 2021).
However, a possible way to make sure that nations such as India or Russia comply with the expectations of the scientist could be the Convention on the Rights of the Child as suggested by Gibbons. Although legal accountability for the direct consequences would be difficult to determine (As Environmentalists Walk Out of UN Talks, Top US Envoy Says No to Reparations for Climate Damage, 2013), it is undeniable that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a legally binding convention for all the signees, whether it is a developed or an underdeveloped State and therefore it could force those State to formally take into consideration not only climate change but the effects on children too (Gibbons, 2014). In these regards, national human rights bodies and accountability mechanism could provide useful in order to further tackle the issue and make policymakers consider the impact of climate change on children as well.
References
BBC News. 2021. COP26: India PM Narendra Modi pledges net zero by 2070. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59125143> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
BBC News. 2021. G20 pledge climate action but make few commitments. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59109186> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
Burke, S., Sanson, A. and Van Hoorn, J., 2018. The Psychological Effects of Climate Change on Children. Current Psychiatry Reports, 20(5).
Democracy Now!. 2013. As Environmentalists Walk Out of UN Talks, Top US Envoy Says No to Reparations for Climate Damage. [online] Available at: <https://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/22/as_environmentalists_walk_out_of_un> [Accessed 11 November 2021].
Gibbons, E., 2014. Climate Change, Children’s Rights, and the Pursuit of Intergenerational Climate Justice. Health and Human Rights, 16(1), pp.19-31.
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Assessment Reports. [online] IPCC, pp.5-45. Available at: <https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
Refaat, M., 2021. Climate change in human rights’ context – The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. [online] eiir.eu. Available at: <https://www.eiir.eu/strategic-affairs/environment-climate-change/climate-change-in-human-rights-context/> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
Ruppel, O., Roschmann, C. and Ruppel-Schlichting, K., 2013. Climate change: international law and global governance. 1st ed. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, pp.349-378.
Sabherwal, A., van der Linden, S. and Swim, J., 2021. The Greta Thunberg Effect: People Familiar with Thunberg are More Likely to Act SPSP. [online] Spsp.org. Available at: < https://bit.ly/3Hj4njG> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
UNICEF, 2021. The Climate Crisis is a Child Right Crisis: : Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index. [online] New York: UNICEF, pp.19-120. Available at: <https://www.unicef.org/media/105376/file/UNICEF-climate-crisis-child-rights-crisis.pdf> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
