Young Children are Uniquely Vulnerable to Climate Change

While all children will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, children aged 0 to 3 are especially vulnerable and susceptible due to physiological, social-emotional, and cognitive characteristics distinct from other life stages, making young children fully reliant on their caregivers. Nearly 90% of the global health burden related to climate change is borne by children under 5 years old (Sheffield and Landrigan 2011). This disproportionate impact is because young children:

• • Breathe twice as fast. When combined with their still-developing pulmonary system, young children are at greater risk of respiratory illnesses from air pollution, including pneumonia, which is the leading cause of death in children under 5 years old.

• • Have a higher metabolism and sweat less, exposing them to increased risk of heat stress, potentially causing dehydration, illness, and death.

• • Have immune systems that are not fully developed and struggle to fend off diseases and infections, contributing to over 75 percent of global malaria fatalities in young children. Climate change-induced shifts in disease patterns like Zika and dengue therefore pose severe risks for this group (United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation 2023).

• • Drink more than adults compared with their body mass. Thus the impacts of drought are heightened, including for malnutrition, diarrhea, and death due to food insecurity and water scarcity.

• • Are particularly susceptible to the dangers of extreme weather events due to their reliance on others for their safety and well-being. If they survive, these children face a high risk of experiencing lifelong physical and mental consequences, including post-traumatic stress and related adverse psychosocial outcomes and developmental delays (Barkin et al. 2021).

• • Will be more affected by climate-related changes in agricultural productivity. This will impact the availability of essential micronutrients in young children’s diets, exacerbating conditions such as anemia and stunting (Harvard 2024).

• • Are at increased risk of exposure to environmental toxins, such as lead, due to their sensory development behavior (i.e., exploring via hand-to-mouth activities) and size (i.e., being closer to the ground, where metals tend to accumulate) (Pure Earth).

These unique vulnerabilities show young children are at great risk to the impacts of climate change. However, this danger has not been fully recognized by many, including climate negotiators, nor has it been addressed in international agreements to date.

Young Children and Caregivers are Underrepresented in Climate Negotiations

Less than half of current Nationally Determined Contributions have incorporated child-responsive content and commitments, and just 2.4% of key global climate funds can be classified as supporting programs specifically targeting children. When looking through the specific lens of investments and policies targeting the early years, the examples are even more difficult to find. This is partly because young children, dependent on their caregivers and others to advocate for them, cannot represent themselves at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) level. It is therefore necessary for the conference to make space for the voices of the youngest children, in age-appropriate ways, as well as those of the parents, caregivers, and experts that constitute their network of care.

Investing in Young Children is a Down payment on Building Resilience and Human Development

Investing in the early years offers a multitude of evidence-based solutions to address the climate crisis. We know from decades of experience and research that high-quality early childhood development (ECD) services and support are one of the best investments a country can make by laying the foundation for future success and yielding improved outcomes in health, education, and economic development (Black et al. 2021; Heckman 2012). Building high-quality ECD service provision on nurturing care principles offers a ready-made pathway for building climate resilience (ARNEC 2022; Ponguta et al. 2023).

It is therefore incumbent upon the UNFCCC to recognize and address the acute vulnerabilities of young children as well as the potential investing in the early years represents as a part of its intergenerational responsibilities and duty to uphold human rights and lead a just transition. Evidenced-based ECD services are ready to be supported and implemented by a global network of scientific experts, advocates, and practitioners. However, to garner the benefits that these services can deliver for the mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage agendas, services must be appropriately financed to ensure they are of the highest quality, delivered at the right time, shared equitably, and targeted at the most vulnerable populations (Ponguta et al. 2023).

Urgent Action is Needed

Building on the progress at COP 28—which, for the first time, recognized children in the negotiated agreement and committed to the first-ever expert dialogue on the impact of climate change on children—global decision-makers now have the opportunity to take concrete action. The undersigned specifically urge climate negotiators to:

• • Ensure that global and national climate-sensitive policies, systems, action plans, and financing mechanisms address the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on the youngest children and leverage nurturing care platforms to enhance preparedness, resilience, and adaptation skills for young children, their families, and their communities.

• • Provide meaningful mechanisms for the representation of parents and caregivers within UNFCCC processes to provide a voice for the unique and specific needs of young children.

• • Deploy new and additional funding for loss and damage, provided as grants rather than loans, targeting ECD and tailored to address young children’s heightened and context-specific climate vulnerabilities.

• • Adopt the actionable recommendations that emerged from the expert dialogue on the disproportionate impact of climate change on young children on how climate policies, action plans, and financing at all levels can be informed by, and respond to, the impacts of climate change on children.

• • Leverage the UNFCCC platform to promote the behavioral change needed for tackling the climate change crisis through nature-based education and nurturing care.

The decisions made at COP 29 could change the trajectory of a generation of young children. Let us build a more hopeful tomorrow by investing in young children today.