Refugees
Killer in Our Midst -Subsea methane hydrate climate catastrophe-online book by Dr Dan Dorritie
Other online resources
The Health and Human Rights Approach to Greenhouse Gas Pollution
Greenhouse gas emissions are deadly pollution forever, but the main source of emissions, fossil fuels, emits deadly air pollution today.
So the big issue is actually fossil fuel pollution.
F. Perera 2017 Pollution from Fossil-Fuel Combustion is the Leading Environmental Threat to Global Pediatric Health and Equity.
Continuing today’s patterns of carbon-intensive energy use is estimated, together with climate change, to cause 6 million deaths per year by 2030, close to 700,000 of which would be due to climate change. This implies that a combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade.
Today already committed (locked in) global climate change is a dire and terrible emergency for the future of today's children the world over.
UN Climate Secretriat report 02 AUG, 2016
Climate Change Mainly Impacting Vulnerable Children
Childen of all regions are more vulnerable to all impacts of climate change on human populations a vulnerable sub-population).
'Older and younger people are also especially sensitive to climate change impacts.
Children's developing immune, respiratory, and neurological systems make them more sensitive to some climate change impacts, including more frequent or severe extreme events, increased heat, and worsened air quality.' (EPA).
Babies and small children have poorer temperature regulation. Young children aremore likely to die from or be severely compromised by diarrheal diseases (increase with global change) and floods.
Children are dependent on other people.Children constitute roughly half of all persons affected by disasters.
In 2007, Save the Children estimated that over the next decade, up to 175 million children worldwide will be affected by climate change-related disaster.
Also, because atmospheric greenhouse gas levels and global climate change are now accelerating, with all impacts happening now and much faster than anticipated, and national governments are doing next to nothing about it, the generation of today's children will grow up in an extremely dangerous climate. Among the impacts is increasing conflict and decreasing food security.
Also, because of already committed climate change, children will grow up in an increasingly poor and hostile planet with declining biodiversity.
A focus on children is generally not included in global climate change impact reports and plans.
So the big issue is actually fossil fuel pollution.
F. Perera 2017 Pollution from Fossil-Fuel Combustion is the Leading Environmental Threat to Global Pediatric Health and Equity.
Continuing today’s patterns of carbon-intensive energy use is estimated, together with climate change, to cause 6 million deaths per year by 2030, close to 700,000 of which would be due to climate change. This implies that a combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade.
Today already committed (locked in) global climate change is a dire and terrible emergency for the future of today's children the world over.
UN Climate Secretriat report 02 AUG, 2016
Climate Change Mainly Impacting Vulnerable Children
Childen of all regions are more vulnerable to all impacts of climate change on human populations a vulnerable sub-population).
'Older and younger people are also especially sensitive to climate change impacts.
Children's developing immune, respiratory, and neurological systems make them more sensitive to some climate change impacts, including more frequent or severe extreme events, increased heat, and worsened air quality.' (EPA).
Babies and small children have poorer temperature regulation. Young children aremore likely to die from or be severely compromised by diarrheal diseases (increase with global change) and floods.
Children are dependent on other people.Children constitute roughly half of all persons affected by disasters.
In 2007, Save the Children estimated that over the next decade, up to 175 million children worldwide will be affected by climate change-related disaster.
Also, because atmospheric greenhouse gas levels and global climate change are now accelerating, with all impacts happening now and much faster than anticipated, and national governments are doing next to nothing about it, the generation of today's children will grow up in an extremely dangerous climate. Among the impacts is increasing conflict and decreasing food security.
Also, because of already committed climate change, children will grow up in an increasingly poor and hostile planet with declining biodiversity.
A focus on children is generally not included in global climate change impact reports and plans.
2015 EPA America’s Children and the Environment, Third Edition
UNICEF 2015 Unless We Act Now
Children's Investment Fund CLIMATE CHANGE
A low carbon world will help secure a healthy and prosperous future for children
A low carbon world will help secure a healthy and prosperous future for children
2011 P. Sheffield, Philip Landrigan Global Climate Change and Children’s Health:Threats Strategies for Prevention
WHO slide presentation Global Climate Change and Child health (old but still good)
WHO slide presentation Global Climate Change and Child health (old but still good)
OXFAM 2014 From IPCC 2014 AR5
Risk of reversal in progress on world hunger as climate change threatens food security
Risk of reversal in progress on world hunger as climate change threatens food security
UNICEF UK Climate change, food systems and children: a case for greater action
2017, F. Perera, Multiple Threats to Child Health from Fossil Fuel Combustion: Air Pollution & Climate Change
2016, Future of Children, Princeton, Special journal issue Children and Climate Change
UNICEF UK 2008 Our climate, our children, our responsibility The implications of climate change for the world’s children
2015 presentation Deema Arafah Climate Change and Pediatric Health
Our Children's Earth Foundation works to act for children on climate change
UNICEF 2014 The Challenges of Climate Change Insight Children on the front line
UNICEF 2011 The benefits of a child-centred approach to climate change adaptation. This is essential right now, but without agressive mitigation at the same time is unlikely to have lasting benefit. Of cource children cannot adapt and the best adaptation is funding and upgrading of public health services.
The US based Children's Environmental Health Network addresses Climate Change and Children's Environmental Health
Communicating the reality of increasing climate change disasters and catastrophes is a dilemma. They have a right to know, but at what age. 2017, M. Ojala and Y. Lakew, Young People and Climate Change Communication
2007 UNICEF Climate Change and Children
2015 American Academy of pediatricians policy statement Global Climate Change & Children’s Health
2009 UNICEF Global Climate Change and Child Health: A review of pathways, impacts and measures to
improve the evidence base, Yoko Akachi, Donna Goodman, David Parker.
improve the evidence base, Yoko Akachi, Donna Goodman, David Parker.
2011, E. Kolstad Quantifying Climate Change Impacts on Human Health: A Case Study for Diarrhea
Future climate change may bring disastrous increases in childhood diarrhea.
Future climate change may bring disastrous increases in childhood diarrhea.
2016 Inverse Science Climate Change Will Increase the World's Cases of Deadly Diarrhea
Children are most vulnerable because:
1. Children are most vulnerable to the toxic particulates and chemicals emitted from fossil fuel combustion (air pollution). These air pollution effects will be increased by global climate change.
2. Children are also most vulnerable to all impacts of global climate change, in industrially developed as well as developing countries.
3. Today's children inherit a very different 'inhospitable planet' Earth (WMO 2017)
due to current and already committed greater degrees of climate change.
The most climate change vulnerable countries (March 2018 HSBC)
India, Pakistan, Philippines Bangladesh (in that order).
1. Children are most vulnerable to the toxic particulates and chemicals emitted from fossil fuel combustion (air pollution). These air pollution effects will be increased by global climate change.
2. Children are also most vulnerable to all impacts of global climate change, in industrially developed as well as developing countries.
3. Today's children inherit a very different 'inhospitable planet' Earth (WMO 2017)
due to current and already committed greater degrees of climate change.
The most climate change vulnerable countries (March 2018 HSBC)
India, Pakistan, Philippines Bangladesh (in that order).
Climate change will exacerbate ongoing causes of morbidity and mortality amongst children.
UNICEF 2017 Levels & Trends in Child Mortality. The world has made substantial progress in reducing child mortality in the past several decades. Even so every year, millions of children under 5 years of age die, mostly from pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. In almost half of the cases, malnutrition plays a role, with unsafe water a signifcant factor. All of these are predicted to increase with global climate change. Also huge disparities in under-fve mortality exist across regions and countries.
UNICEF 2017 Levels & Trends in Child Mortality. The world has made substantial progress in reducing child mortality in the past several decades. Even so every year, millions of children under 5 years of age die, mostly from pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. In almost half of the cases, malnutrition plays a role, with unsafe water a signifcant factor. All of these are predicted to increase with global climate change. Also huge disparities in under-fve mortality exist across regions and countries.
Research
by date
by date
Oct 2019 UNICEF State of the World Children Food & Nutrition: 149 million
children aged under 5 still suffer from stunting and almost 50 million
from wasting; 340 million children suffer from the hidden hunger of
deficiencies of vitamins and minerals. Climate change features.
21 June 2018 World Bank, S, Hallegatte 20 million people will be forced into poverty through climate change in 2030. 100 million people if no speedy action
March 2017 UNICEF Thirsting for a Future
2011 literature review
children and climate change section.
children aged under 5 still suffer from stunting and almost 50 million
from wasting; 340 million children suffer from the hidden hunger of
deficiencies of vitamins and minerals. Climate change features.
21 June 2018 World Bank, S, Hallegatte 20 million people will be forced into poverty through climate change in 2030. 100 million people if no speedy action
March 2017 UNICEF Thirsting for a Future
2011 literature review
children and climate change section.
UNICEF The economics ?2012 Making the Case: Costs and benefits of climate change impacts on children
UNICEF 2013 Youth in action on climate change: inspirations from around the world
2014 UNICEF The Challenges of Climate Change Children on the front line
2007 UNICEF Climate change and children
“We call on all members of society to join us in a global movement that will help build a world fit for children through upholding our commitments to the following principles and objectives…
“Protect the Earth for children. We must safeguard our natural environment, with its diversity of life, its beauty and its resources, all of which enhance the quality of life, for present and future generations. ( A World Fit for Children, 2002, UN Special Session on Children, 2002)
“Protect the Earth for children. We must safeguard our natural environment, with its diversity of life, its beauty and its resources, all of which enhance the quality of life, for present and future generations. ( A World Fit for Children, 2002, UN Special Session on Children, 2002)
UNICEF 2017 'Climate change is contributing to a growing water crisis and putting the lives of millions of children at risk'. 'By 2040 1 in 4 children are projected to be living in areas of extremely high water stress'
2017 (GHNGN) The most vulnerable of the vulnerable
18 Feb. 2020 A future for the world’s children? A WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commission
Recent trends
At the end of 2019, around 5.1 million people in 95 countries and territories were living in displacement as a result of disasters that happened not only in 2019, but also in previous years. (IDMC, 2020). The countries with the highest number of internally displaced persons were Afghanistan (1.2 million); India (590,000); Ethiopia (390,000), Philippines (364,000) and Sudan (272,000) (ibid.).
In 2019, nearly 2,000 disasters triggered 24.9 million new internal displacements across 140 countries and territories; this is the highest figure recorded since 2012 and three times the number of displacements caused by conflict and violence (ibid.) Most of the disaster displacements were the result of tropical storms and monsoon rains in South Asia and East Asia and Pacific; four countries accounted for more than 17 million new internal displacements due to disaster: India (5 million), the Philippines (4.1 million), Bangladesh (4.1 million), and China (4 million) (ibid.)
While the majority of mobility in the context of environmental and climate change more generally, including disaster displacement, occurs within the borders of countries, some people are forced to move abroad. Global data on cross-border movement in the context of disasters are, however, limited, with only a few notable cases being examined so far (Nansen Initiative, 2015; Ionesco, Mokhnacheva and Gemenne, 2017). In some cases, official sources on humanitarian visas by countries such as the United States (US), Brazil and Argentina for Haitians can be used.
Slow-onset processes such as droughts or sea level rise also increasingly affect people’s mobility worldwide. Though specific data are not available, case studies are highlighted by existing research, for example: Foresight, 2011; Piguet and Laczko, 2014; Ionesco, Mokhnacheva and Gemenne, 2017.
The relocation of communities in the context of environmental and climate change is also increasingly implemented by governments (for a summary of recent relocation programmes see Ionesco, Mokhnacheva and Gemenne, 2016; Benton, 2017 and Georgetown University, UNHCR and IOM, 2017). For instance, tens of thousands of people have been relocated in Haiti (Pierre, 2015) and in Viet Nam (UN Viet Nam, 2014; Chun 2014; Entzinger and Scholten, 2015); hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia (Foresight, 2011: 177); about a million in the Philippines (Ranque and Quetulio-Navarra, 2015; Thomas, 2015; Brookings and UNHCR, 2015: 3-4) and several millions in China (Foresight, 2011: 177).
