3 ways climate change threatens children’s lives

Climate change impacts children’s environments and their ability to survive and thrive.

UNICEF

Three boys in flooded plains standing in waist high water. The boy in the middle child has up a placard saying: The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis

UNICEF/UN0729455/Faheem

Climate change exposes children to risk in different ways. Rising temperatures and other environmental changes can make diseases more dangerous, droughts more common and can significantly impact children’s growth and development.

Almost all the world’s children are facing at least one environmental risk whether air pollution, heatwaves, floods, cyclones, disease or drought.

1. Climate change makes diseases more dangerous

Rising temperatures and other environmental changes worsen the effects of diseases on children and increase their chances of exposure.

For example, the habitat for mosquitoes transmitting malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever is projected to expand, putting new communities at risk.

In Indonesia, a shift in rainfall patterns has seen the mosquito population multiply, increasing malaria transmission throughout the community.

When kids are sick with malaria, they can’t go to school, play or take exams. Parents have to stop working.