Planetoverhaul.com

More than 46% of the world’s population is now younger than 25 years old.
Source: UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008
Approximately 175 million children will be affected by climate change induced natural disasters every year over the next decade. This is 50 million more than during the ten years to 2005.
Source: Legacy of Disasters; Children Bear the Brunt of Climate Warming, Save the Children UK 2007
Children are more likely than adults to perish during natural disasters or succumb to malnutrition, injuries or disease in the aftermath. Over 96% of all disaster-related deaths worldwide in recent years have occurred in developing countries.
Source: UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008
Women and children account for more than 75% of displaced people following natural disasters. For instance, during the July 2007 floods in Bangladesh, 4.2 million children were affected, 300,000 of them under the age of five.
Source: UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008
An estimated 650,000 people, of which 300,000 children, were affected by back-to-back hurricanes in Haiti in 2008.
Source: UNICEF Press release (6 September 2008)
Factors that play a role in climate change, such as emissions from vehicles and factories, significantly harm children’s health. Deaths from asthma, which is the most common chronic disease among children, are expected to increase by nearly 20% by 2016 unless urgent action is taken.
Smoke in the home leads to the deaths of nearly 800,000 children each year.
Source: UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008
Nearly 10 million children under the age of five die every year of largely preventable diseases.
Malaria – which currently claims the lives of around 800,000 children every year – is sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall and could become more common if weather patterns change.
Source: UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008
In a 6-year study from Peru, researchers found an 8% increase in hospitalizations for diarrhea with every degree centigrade increase above the normal average temperature.
Source: Checkley W, Epstein LD, Gilman RH, et al: Effect of El Nino and ambient temperature on hospital admissions for diarrhoeal diseases in Peruvian children. Lancet. 2000
Every child will have safe water in the UK, but only 1 in 3 children in Ethiopia will. By 2020, it is projected that some 75-250 million people in Africa will be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change. Forty-four percent of the continent’s population is under the age of fifteen.
Sources: Save the Children Alliance, IPCC “Summary for Policymakers” of the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007; Population Reference Bureau
Developing countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America are forecast to see reductions in agricultural productivity of between 5 and 25% by 2080s due to climate change. In 2006, 1.6 million children under the age of five required major humanitarian assistance in drought-stricken areas of the Horn of Africa.
Sources: Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country, Centre for Global Development, 2007;Progress for Children: a report card on water and sanitation, UNICEF 2006
The number of children dying each year due to the effects of malnutrition – currently 3.5 million– is likely to increase as a result of climate change.
Source: In the Face of Disaster: Children and Climate Change, Save the Children Alliance
Climate change could cause an additional 40,000 to 160,000 child deaths per year in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa through GDP losses alone by 2100.
Source: The Stern Review 2007
Climate change can also have a significant impact on a child’s ability to attend school. For instance, during the July 2007 floods in Sudan, nearly 200 schools were damaged, affecting nearly 45,000 children.
Sources: Association for Childhood Education International, UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008
A survey conducted in 2005 by the UK Government found that 24% of the 1,000 10 to 18 year olds questioned believed climate change presented the greatest threat to the world’s future.
Source: BBC News Online ‘Climate change worries children’ (23 June 2005)