The issue

The climate crisis is leading to another crisis altogether – a child’s rights crisis. Not only must UNICEF continue to focus their efforts today on building a better world for every child, every day, everywhere, but they must also look to mitigate against threats in the future that compromise any progress made so far. A key focus, when looking at all the climate stresses and hazards and their likelihood and impact when developing plausible scenarios to 2050 is the threat of heatwaves. It is known that children experience and will continue to experience, more severe effects of heatwaves than adults, as they lack the same ability to regulate their body temperatures. Being able to highlight this plight using data and evidence in a way that can get governments and decision makers to listen is key. 

Why does it matter?

Sustainable Development Goal 13 seeks for countries to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. From massive wildfires to droughts, from hurricanes to floods, climate change is affecting people everywhere. But some people and some groups, particularly children, are affected more than others due to their vulnerabilities. Where, and on what, should countries be focusing their efforts? What effect will certain interventions have on children’s risk to climate change? How can countries build their capacity and resilience to support the most vulnerable? What data is needed to be able to understand climate change risk to children better?  

Our project

Leveraging the research already conducted on the Children's Climate Risk Index (CCRI) project that we partnered with UNICEF to deliver, our follow up project will 

• Using existing climate data to build new models to predict heatwave frequency, duration, severity to 2050 on heatwaves and map children’s exposure to those heatwave events 

• Conduct a rapid literature review  

• Work with UNICEF to create a report, such that the outputs of the research can be taken to COP27 for UNICEF to urge world leaders  

Theme

Climate Change

Who is Involved

University of Southampton

University of Edinburgh (School of Geoscience)

University of Stirling

UNICEF

Project Outputs

In the media