“Natural disasters are increasingly frequent,” the report notes, and “[a]t times of crisis, children and adolescents are most vulnerable. While the youngest are most likely to perish or succumb to disease, all children and young people suffer as a result of food shortages, poor water and sanitation, interrupted education and family separation or displacement.” Read more from UNICEFs recent report “The State of the World’s Children”
In its recentreport,The State of the World’s Children 2011, UNICEF includes climate change among the most serious issues confronting the next generation. Youth will have to confront climate change long after our current leaders have died. But, even now, they are disproportionately affected by it.
“Natural disasters are increasingly frequent,” the report notes, and “[a]t times of crisis, children and adolescents are most vulnerable. While the youngest are most likely to perish or succumb to disease, all children and young people suffer as a result of food shortages, poor water and sanitation, interrupted education and family separation or displacement.”
While it’s widely recognized that developing countries will be hit harder by climate change than the industrialized world, the report offers this additional piece of information:88 percent of all adolescents live in developing countries.
There may be a silver lining: UNICEF sees an opportunity for young people to become “effective agents of change for the long-term protection and stewardship of the earth if” — and it’s a crucialif— “they are provided with knowledge andopportunity.” Among young people climate skepticism is all but unheard of, and youth groups have repeatedly called for immediate and aggressive action against climate change.
It’s a testament to how serious an issue climate change is that a report with as broad a focus as “youth” hones in on it. The human lens on the problem also leads to an acknowledgement of the diversity of effects climate change will have on us: “Climate change is not just an ‘environmental’ issue,” says UNICEF, echoing a claim that we at ClimateHealthConnect find ourselves making regularly. “It requires collective action that brings together sustainable development, energy security, and actions to safeguard children’s health and well-being.”
Among those that don’t care about glaciers or polar bears, there must be many who do care about human health. And among those who don’t care much about health, perhaps there will be some who do care about children.