Last updated on August 29th, 2024 at 06:18 pm
UNITED NATIONS, United States — Nearly half a billion children worldwide face twice as many days of extreme heat annually as their grandparents did, the United Nations said in a report Tuesday, itself sounding an alarm over potentially deadly consequences of climate change for the youngest and most vulnerable.
A new report by UNICEF says climate change is pushing temperatures to record levels, meaning one in five children in the world-about 466 million children-are living in areas where the frequency of extremely hot days has already increased by more than twofold over what it was 60 years ago.
“The bodies of young children are not just smaller versions of adults; they are significantly more vulnerable to extreme heat,” said Lily Caprani, UNICEF’s Chief of Advocacy in an interview with AFP. She added that pregnant women were also more vulnerable under such conditions.
Children Face School Disruptions and Health Risks
Apart from health issues, very high temperatures are wreaking havoc on education. In 2024, for example, UNICEF finds cases where up to 80 million children have missed out on schooling because closures were induced by heat.
The report considered 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35 degrees Celsius, a threshold for extreme heat and compared current averages for 2020-2024 with those from the 1960s. The agency further noted that such scorching temperatures have hit children worldwide, but those in West and Central Africa are among the worst-hit.
This extreme heat already turns upside-down the lives of more than 123 million children in these regions, representing 39 percent of the child population, for at least one-third of the year. In Mali, for example, it goes up over 95 degrees Fahrenheit more than 200 days each year, and most families experience that without any help from cooling technologies, such as air conditioning.
In Latin America, too, where 48 million children are facing twice the number of extreme heat days as compared to 60 years ago.
“The trajectory’s getting worse and worse for these children,” Caprani warned, showing just how urgent the situation is. She emphasized that children, since they are still immature physiologically and with still-developing organ systems, are more prone to the impacts of heat stress, with fatality sometimes occurring critically.
The report also listed other indirect effects of extreme heat on children, such as increasing risks for malnutrition, susceptibility to diseases like malaria and dengue, and possible adverse consequences on neurodevelopment and mental health.
Call to Action to Protect Future Generations
UNICEF called on governments to “help their populations adapt to these risks.” That would involve parents understanding how to recognize signs about the risk of heatstroke, improving medical training, and investing in cooling infrastructure such as air conditioning at schools. But the broader solution lies in taking up the root cause of Global climate change: the global reliance on fossil fuels.
