Rapid Literature Review: Children and Heat Waves

The Children's Climate Risk Index (CCRI) predicts an alarming future for children if carbon emissions persist at current levels. By 2050, heat waves are projected to intensify in frequency, severity, duration, and geographical reach, posing significant threats to children globally. Their vulnerability stems from physiological, behavioural, and dependency factors, emphasizing the urgent need for awareness and action. Sadly, children's voices are conspicuously absent from climate action plans, despite the emphasis in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on children's right to participate in decisions affecting them.

A comprehensive rapid academic literature review was conducted as part of the CCRI project for UNICEF. It aimed to identify known risks, vulnerabilities, and capacities of children, paving the way for further research and action. The review asked critical questions about risks, factors influencing vulnerability, ways to mitigate these risks, and the relationship between heat waves and discrimination against children. It also sought to gauge how existing literature portrayed children's experiences and the specific risks tied to increasing heat wave frequency, duration, and severity.

Employing both systematic and narrative approaches, researchers scoured eight diverse academic databases, yielding an initial pool of 1986 potentially relevant articles. After stringent curation based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, 296 articles were selected for detailed examination. Ultimately, 124 articles were deemed relevant and included in the final analysis. The qualitative descriptive analysis method was used to identify and code key themes related to the research questions, shedding light on the critical discourse around the impact of heat waves on children and the urgent need to incorporate their voices and rights into climate risk mitigation efforts.

Authors:

Dr Irena L. C. Connon, Ph D, University of Stirling, irena.connon@stir.ac.uk

Professor Lena Dominelli, Ph D, University of Stirling, lena.dominelli@stir.ac.uk