Climate Change and Children
Section snippets
Climate change
The earth's climate is determined by complex interactions that involve the sun, oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere (which includes sea ice, freshwater ice, snow, glaciers, frozen ground, and permafrost), land surface, and biosphere. These interactions are based on physical laws: conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and Newton's second law of motion. The principal driving force for weather and climate is the uneven warming of the earth's surface because of the tilt in the axis of rotation.
Climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes
Weather, climate variability, and climate change can affect children directly and indirectly (Fig. 3). Directly, extreme weather events (such as floods, droughts, and windstorms) and heat events annually affect millions of people and cause billions of dollars of damage. In 2003 in Europe, Canada, and the United States, floods and storms resulted in 101 people dead or missing and caused $9.73 billion in insured damages [11]. More than 35,000 excess deaths were attributed to the extended heat
Intergenerational equity
The inherent inertia in the climate system means that the earth is committed to decades of climate change from the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, the earth probably will warm 0.5°C to 1.0°C during the next several decades; this warming will be in addition to the 0.6°C increase in global average surface temperature that occurred during the last century [1]. This probability raises intergenerational equity issues: the actions
Opportunities for reducing current and future vulnerabilities to climate change
Climate change will make more difficult the control of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes. Therefore, health policies need explicitly to incorporate climate-related risks to maintain current levels of control [57]. In most cases, the primary response will be to enhance current health risk management activities. The health determinants and outcomes that are projected to increase with climate change are problems today (by definition, new risks are problematic to project). In some
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Cited by (56)
How climate change degrades child health: A systematic review and meta-analysis
2024, Science of the Total EnvironmentWhat about the children? The effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals
2024, Journal of Environmental PsychologyClimate Change and Child Health Equity
2023, Pediatric Clinics of North AmericaReconnoitering school children vulnerability and its determinants: Evidence from flood disaster-hit rural communities of Pakistan
2022, International Journal of Disaster Risk ReductionCitation Excerpt :As evidenced by the current study findings, Malnutrition was observed to be more frequent in children from Nowshera and Charsadda than in those from the other two regions. It is especially concerning because children are more exposed to environmental threats, and this is owing to their increasing exposure to risks effects [71,72]. Since climate variability is likely to increase, future health risks associated with this age group would be affected by a higher frequency of climate extremes such as floods [73].
Pediatric societies’ declaration on responding to the impact of climate change on children
2021, Journal of Climate Change and HealthViolence Against Children: Recognition, Rights, Responses
2021, Pediatric Clinics of North America