Will Capitalism Heed the Warnings?

Unicef warned that climate breakdown would reverse the gains made in recent years in protecting children and enshrining their rights in law. More than 500 million children live in areas judged to be at extremely high risk of floods, due to cyclones, hurricanes, storms and rising sea levels. In the Caribbean alone, the number of children displaced by extreme weather events has risen sixfold in five years, with more than 760,000 children displaced between 2014 and 2018. More than 160 million children are living in areas with high levels of drought, with severe impacts on their development and exposure to disease. That number is expected to rise dramatically, so that on current trends as many as one in four children around the world will live in areas of extreme water stress, according to the UN.

Diseases, including mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, are forecast to spread to new areas as a result of global heating. Children under five are likely to be most at risk. Air pollution, which is made worse by coal-burning power stations, fossil fuels burned for transport and biomass burning in homes without clean energy sources, also hurts children disproportionately. Breathing toxic air can stunt children’s lungs permanently, and has a long-term impact on their health, brain function and development. Toxic air contributes to the deaths of about 600,000 deaths of children under five every year, from pneumonia and other respiratory problems. But the measures needed to tackle the climate crisis – replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, creating green spaces and planting trees – would also help to clean up dirty air.

Gautam Narasimhan, a senior adviser on climate change, energy and environment at Unicef, said: “From hurricanes to droughts to floods to wildfires, the consequences of the climate crisis are all around us, affecting children the most and threatening their health, education, protection and very survival. Children are essential actors in responding to the climate crisis. We owe it to them to put all our efforts behind solutions we know can make a difference.”

Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, applauded the young activists. “I understand the despair and rage that so many young people and older ones too are feeling. All of us know the facts and so far there has been far too little real action. Children and young people have a right to participate. We need to implement the principle of intergenerational equity that the Paris agreement sets out.”

A quarter of the world’s population are at risk of water supply problems as mountain glaciers, snow-packs and alpine lakes are run down by global heating and rising demand, according to an international study. The study says 1.9 billion people and half of the world’s biodiversity hotspots could be negatively affected by the decline of natural water towers, which store water in winter and release it slowly over the summer.

“Climate change threatens the entire mountain ecosystem,” the report concludes. “Immediate action is required to safeguard the future of the world’s most important and vulnerable water towers ( a term they use to describe the role of water storage and supply that mountain ranges play to sustain environmental and human water demands downstream)”