Special Youth Against Climate Change
IPCC report Spain, hot spot of climate change: 3.5 degrees more, fires and droughts
"The climate crisis is a crisis of children's rights."
One billion children around the world are at extreme risk of suffering the worst effects of climate change, according to the first UNICEF special report focused on global warming and which has been titled with the phrase with which this article begins.
The report offers a
risk index by countries
from which a ranking has been drawn up, led by the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, although 33 nations are at "extremely high risk" of suffering the effects of climate change. . Children living in these places are more exposed to the consequences of climate change, which
threatens their safety and health, making them more vulnerable to diseases, and their access to education.
Spain is ranked 117th in this ranking, which measures the risk of suffering the consequences of climate change from the perspective of children in 163 countries.
The classification is based on how exposed children are to extreme environmental phenomena such as cyclones and heat waves, and their vulnerability to them, which they assess according to the services to which they have access, such as drinking water, sanitation and assistance. sanitary.
Compared to adults, children need proportionally more food and water, are more susceptible to toxic chemicals, temperature changes and disease, and are less likely to survive extreme weather events, according to the report.
Unicef's warning comes a few days after the publication of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Group of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC) linked to the UN, which warned of the worrying increase in temperatures and the greater frequency and intensity with the that extreme weather events are already occurring.
In fact, the Unicef report notes that
the figures offered in this work "will likely worsen
as the impacts of climate change accelerate."
A boy from Puerto Cabezas (Nicaragua) helps his parents rebuild their house after the passage of Hurricane Iota, in November 2020UNICEF
The report has been prepared in collaboration with the organization Fridays for Future, founded by the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, and coinciding with the third anniversary of the start of the school strikes for the climate, a movement that she began three summers ago now deploying in front of the Parliament succeeded a banner with the slogan
School strike for the climate.
Thunberg, who is now 18 years old, has become a symbol of the fight against climate change and has encouraged millions of children and young people around the world to call on their politicians to take action to combat rising temperatures. Other young Fridays for Future activists such as Adriana Calderón (Mexico), Farzana Faruk Jhumu (Bangladesh) and Eric Njuguna (Kenya) have also contributed to this report.
33 countries at extreme risk
"Children around the world have been calling for action for three years.
UNICEF backs their calls for change with an unanswerable message
,
"
Henrietta Fore, UNICEF CEO, said in a press release.
Of the 7.7 billion people on Earth, 2.2 billion are children
.
Almost half of them live in one of the 33 countries classified by UNICEF as "extremely high risk" of suffering the effects of climate change.
"For the first time we have a global photo of where and how children are vulnerable to climate change, and that photo is unimaginably terrible," Fore says. According to the head of this UN organization,
"climate change and environmental disasters are undermining all children's rights,
from access to clean air, food, drinking water, education, and housing. , to freedom and even the right to survive. Practically, there is no child who is not going to be affected by it, "he says.
According to the report, 240 million children are highly exposed to coastal flooding;
330 million to river flooding;
400 million to cyclones;
600 million to diseases transmitted by vectors (such as dengue or malaria);
one billion children breathe polluted air;
815 million are exposed to lead contamination;
820 million to heat waves and 920 million to water scarcity.
Although virtually all children are vulnerable to at least one of these problems, one in three is exposed to at least four impacts, and one in seven children lives in areas affected by at least five impacts.
Clear impacts and solutions
"Recent record heat waves, wildfires and floods in many countries herald a 'new normal' full of challenges. The impacts of climate change are clear and so are the solutions," Fore writes in the report.
SEBASTIAN RICH
The measures recommended by the authors include increasing investment in adaptation and resilience to climate change in the most important services for children (education, sanitation, access to safe water); reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45% by 2030 (compared to 2010) to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century; promote that recovery plans after the Covid-19 pandemic are sustainable and low in carbon; include young people in national and international climate negotiations, such as the Glasgow Climate Summit in November (COP26), and prepare them to deal with the effects of climate change.
The report also points out that the 33 countries most vulnerable to climate change together emit only 9% of the world's CO2.
India is the only one of the 10 countries globally responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions listed among those 33 nations "at extremely high risk" of suffering the effects of climate change.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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