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Join on Telegram Rabat – UNICEF is warning that one billion children are at grave risk of the growing climate crisis, in its new report published on Friday, August 20. Several of Morocco’s southern neighbors are listed as facing the gravest risk to their future generations.
UNICEF foreshadows that young people in the Central African Republic, Chad,Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Nigeria are likely to be at greatest risk of the effects of climate change. The UN agency for the protection of children released its latest report “The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index” to warn of a “dire” situation.
UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) is unique as it is the “first comprehensive analysis of climate risk from a child’s perspective,” according to the UN agency.
Nearly half of all children face “extremely high risk”
According to the report’s findings, nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children are living in countries classified as “extremely high risk.”
In a press release to accompany the publication of the report, UNICEF warns that “these children face a deadly combination of exposure to multiple climate and environmental shocks with a high vulnerability due to inadequate essential services, such as water and sanitation, healthcare and education.”
According to the CCRI, the climate crisis is expected to expose a combined 570 million children to coastal and river flooding, 400 million face the threat of cyclones, and a further 600 million are “highly exposed” to vector borne diseases that accompany natural disasters.
Man-made climate change and its contributing factors are set to expose 815 million children to lead pollution; 820 million to heatwaves, 920 million to water scarcity, and 1 billion children are likely to suffer from high levels of air pollution.
Many of the world’s population of young people will not face just one of these threats, but are exposed to several at once. One in 7 children live in areas where they could face “at least five major shocks,” according to the CCRI.
Inadequate global response
Despite the report’s dire warnings, few solutions appear at hand. The current global response to mitigating the effects of climate change are all drastically behind target, temperatures are rising at a faster pace than expected, and current famines are left neglected.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recent report highlighted that its findings constituted a “code red for humanity.”
Yet, as with all apocalyptic climate warnings, business-as-usual continues. There are currently no limits on fossil fuel extraction, no restrictions on the 100 companies that are responsible for 71% of all global emissions, while governments continue to commit to climate goals that are to be achieved without hurting the bottom-line of the world’s multinational companies.
Meanwhile, international aid agencies have been begging and pleading to prevent catastrophic famines first in Yemen and now in Madagascar. Their warnings have been ignored, and now the begging and pleading is directed at asking for assistance as the forewarned famines are now claiming thousands of lives amid global indifference.
As billionaires continue to pump their fortunes into vanity projects like space exploration, and wealthy governments pump billions into saving their polluting cruise-ship and airline industries, children around the world face pending danger, with little hope for a real global response.
