Joined by youth climate activists from Mexico, Bangladesh, and Kenya, Swedish climate hero Greta Thunberg wrote a powerful opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times, saying youth will “not allow industrialized countries to duck responsibility for the suffering of children in other parts of the world. Governments, industry, and the rest of the international community must work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as 195 nations committed to do in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. “
The writers rely heavily on information from the recent UNICEF report The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis, which introduces the Children’s Climate Risk Index. The CCRI is a data-based analysis on young people’s exposure to environmental disasters.
A composite index, the CCRI brings together geographical data by analyzing 1.) exposure to climate and environmental hazards, shocks and stresses; and 2.) child vulnerability. The CCRI helps to understand and measure the likelihood of climate and environmental shocks or stresses leading to the erosion of development progress, the deepening of deprivation, and/or humanitarian situations affecting children or vulnerable households and groups.
The children write:
The Children’s Climate Risk Index reveals a disturbing global inequity when it comes to the worst effects of climate change. Thirty-three countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria and Guinea, are considered extremely high-risk for children, but those countries collectively emit just 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The 10 countries with the highest emissions, including China, the United States, Russia and Japan, collectively account for nearly 70 percent of global emissions. And children in those higher-emitting states face lower risks: Only one of these countries, India, is ranked as extremely high-risk in the UNICEF report. NYT. This Is the World Being Left to Us by Adults
With less than 100 days until the UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow, the authors say adults are failing miserably at their primary task — to protect children — as they continue to fall short of aggressively addressing climate change.
The authors frequently cite the UNICEF report Among UNICEF’s findings:
- virtually every child on the planet is exposed to at least one climate or environmental hazard right now.
- A staggering 850 million, about a third of all the world’s children, are exposed to four or more climate or environmental hazards, including heat waves, cyclones, air pollution, flooding or water scarcity.
- A billion children, nearly half the children in the world, live in “extremely high risk” countries
Fridays for Future, a movement of millions of children and young people have united to demand decision-makers to act on their demands, claiming they will not stop protesting until then.
“For children and young people, climate change is the single greatest threat to our futures,” the young activists write. “We are the ones who will have to clean up the mess you adults have made, and we are the ones who are more likely to suffer now.”