Almost all of the world’s children are exposed to at least one climate hazard, with as many as 1.8 billion at risk from droughts and 1.2 billion from extreme heat, the United Nations Children’s Fund said in a report on Tuesday.
UNICEF said children were “disproportionately affected” by a range of intensifying climate-related risks and that governments urgently needed to invest in infrastructure, adaptation and disaster management capabilities to reduce their exposure.
The Children’s Climate Risk Report examined a broad range of climate hazards alongside the impact of air pollution and the risks of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, while also factoring in data on access to water, healthcare and social services worldwide.
As many as 1.1 billion children globally were exposed to at least three overlapping climate risks, the report warned, cautioning of a “dangerous cascade of multiple, overlapping hazards” that could overwhelm governments and social services.
“It’s not just the exposure to the single hazards like floods or droughts or heat waves and extreme heat that children face, but it is the exposure to multiple hazards,” said Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan, UNICEF statistics manager and one of the report’s authors.
As many as 662 million children were at risk from tropical storms, 337 million from riverine floods and 33 million from coastal floods, while one billion children were exposed to malaria, mostly in Africa. In 2024, 242 million children across 85 countries had their schooling disrupted by climate hazards.
UNICEF identified Somalia, Madagascar, Myanmar, Cambodia and Pakistan as the most vulnerable countries. The highest numbers of drought-exposed children live in agriculture-dependent economies including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tanzania. Children in landlocked nations were also found to face “disproportionate” risks of drought, desertification, heat stress and flash floods, with water stress set to intensify in countries such as Botswana and Burkina Faso.
(Reuters)