How climate change fuels child poverty - WeWorld Index Findings
By ChildFund Alliance - Contributions from Eleonora Mattacchione and Martin Svatek
Never before in history have so many crises occurred on multiple fronts: The COVID-19 pandemic brought the entire world to its knees, affecting both mental and physical well-being and health services, causing job loss and increasing poverty. Conflicts continue, such as those in Syria and Yemen, or unfold, such as Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Climate change is also ravaging our planet, with overlapping weather hazards becoming more frequent and catastrophic year after year.
In this alarming scenario, children and youth are denied not only their fundamental human rights, but also the possibility to live their life to their fullest, today and in the future. This global scenario is examined in the most recent edition of the WeWorld Index, a flagship product of ChildFund Alliance. The Index aims to investigate the level of inclusion and exclusion of children and women worldwide through the analysis of a set of 30 indicators considered relevant for their living conditions and well-being. It explores the overlapping effects of the polycrisis characterizing today's world and the impact it has on the rights of women and children.
The Index identifies barriers that constitute great threats to children’s futures, which have been identified by all 11 ChildFund Alliance members that operate in 70 countries worldwide and help more than 32 million children and their families. The barriers identified include poverty, climate change, forced migration, conflicts, and online risks. The Index analyses how their respective effects intertwine and thereby create a threatening combination that has the potential to severely compromise the future of entire generations both present and future.
“1 billion children are multi dimensionally poor ”
Multi-dimensional poverty hinders children in a pervasive way: It violates their right to adequate standards of living and the right to be free from deprivations (in health, education, nutrition, care, and protection). It has a particularly negative effect during a child’s first three years of life, which are crucial for their brain growth and their susceptibility to external influences. Interconnections between economic poverty and learning poverty exist as well, since the poorest families often cannot afford school-related expenses and they might resort to coping mechanisms, such as sending their children to work or marrying off their daughters. Therefore, children and youth who have not received an education are likely to become uneducated adults, which perpetuates an already vicious cycle of poverty.
Unfortunately, this cycle is compounded by the catastrophic consequences of climate change, which, like poverty, is multi-dimensional in both its causes and effects. Indeed, the climate crisis does not play fair and negatively impacts already vulnerable social groups the most, such as children living in poverty. The exposure to overlapping environmental hazards is of particular concern to children’s future, because slow-onset events and extreme weather events can trigger, reinforce, and magnify each other, thereby exacerbating inequalities.
Children living in poverty are also more vulnerable to environmental shocks, as they have the least resources and capacities to adapt. Their lack of access to essential services (such as water, sanitation and hygiene, healthcare, education, and social protection) increases their exposure and vulnerability to climate change. At the same time, protracted climate hazards render access to these essential services even more difficult for children who are already in distress. They can also reduce household income and purchasing power, forcing parents to send their children off to work and drop out of school.
Moreover, neither child poverty nor climate change are gender neutral as they both disproportionally affect young girls. Indeed, climate change can cause displacement and exacerbate poverty, which for its part leads disadvantaged families to marry away their daughters early in order to reduce the household’s expenditures. This often exposes girls to violence or abuse by their partners and leads to teenage pregnancies, which are extremely dangerous for their young bodies yet unfit for childbearing, and can lead to school dropouts.
Indeed, as the planet warms and environmental disasters become more frequent, the link between climate change and violence against children is crystallizing ever more clearly. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children noted in 2022 “the climate crisis is a threat multiplier for violence against children, with around one billion of them exposed to its risks.”[1] As evidence on how climate change increases violence against children grows, ChildFund Alliance is ramping up its efforts in this area to protect children, who are the least responsible for the climate crisis.
What should we do to mitigate the negative impact that climate change has on child poverty and children’s rights?
Reinforce and, if necessary, establish social protection systems and programs with an intergenerational perspective. These should include family-friendly policies aimed at reducing both monetary and multi-dimensional household poverty through child benefits; paid maternity, paternity and parental leave; childcare services; universal child grants; decent work and minimum income; reductions in the cost of essential goods and services, etc. A holistic package of family-friendly policies should further provide quality and accessible services in areas such as nutrition, education, as well as both physical and mental health.
Bearing in mind the link between climate change-related effects and child poverty, governments must ensure that children’s best interests and rights are explicitly referenced in all national climate plans, including their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) as stated by the Declaration on Children, Youth and Climate Action.
To prevent climate change-induced poverty from adversely impacting other fundamental child rights, including protection from violence, we recommend investing in services and infrastructure that are climate-resilient and provide children with a secure environment. This includes providing access to secure housing, clean water, sanitary facilities, healthcare and education that can soften the negative impact of climate change on a child’s rights and well-being.
Almost every child on earth is exposed to at least one climate hazard.[2] In addition, today’s children will face around three times as many climate disasters as their grandparents did.[3] In light of these facts and given the detrimental impact that climate change has on children’s well-being, an even higher number of children will likely be poor than is already the case today. Urgent and decisive action by governments and the international community in mitigating the climate crisis is therefore imperative. We cannot wait any longer if we are determined to protect children’s rights.
[1] SRSS-VAC calls for urgent climate action in her annual report to the General Assembly (Sep. 2022), UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children
[2] UNICEF (2021), The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis. Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index, https://www.unicef.org/media/105376/file/UNICEF-climate-crisis-child-rights-crisis.pdf, consulted in May 2022
[3] Thiery W. et al (2021), Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes in Science, 26 September 2021, Vol. 374, Issue 6564, pp. 158-160, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi7339, consulted in May 2022
Eleonora Mattacchione is Junior Advocacy Officer at WeWorld Onlus and Martin Svatek United Nations Representative at ChildFund Alliance.