Opinion: children must be at the centre of climate action

2023 to 2025 have been the three hottest years on record. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were at the highest they have been in the last 3.5 million years, and climate-related challenges, such as flooding, droughts, and air pollution, are on the rise. Today, nearly every child faces at least one climate shock per year, impacting their education, health, and well-being. Yet children have been largely disregarded in the response to climate change. With global temperatures rising, children must be at the center of climate action. 

Climate shocks often negatively impact vulnerable families’ household income, thereby limiting available resources to support their children’s schooling. Girls are at relatively greater risk of dropping out post-climate shocks; when forced to choose between sending their boys or girls to school due to less savings, families typically send their boys. In Botswana, for example, following major droughts, girls accounted for 70 per cent of the children who were pulled out of school. In some contexts, climate stressors may also result in higher cases of early marriage, migration and displacement, or child labor, further disrupting children’s education. In southern India, for example, adverse rainfall shocks resulted in an uptick in households sending their children to work rather than school to supplement household earnings.

In cases where children can afford to continue school, climate shocks pose serious challenges to students’ learning experiences. Children learning in hotter climates or with excessive air pollution complete less formal schooling, struggle with more disciplinary issues, and score lower on standardised tests than those studying in environments with cooler temperatures and better air quality. Two decades of evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam points to clear correlations between greater climate shocks and lower cognitive outcomes among 12,000 children. Even within countries, students from lower-income households typically fall further behind their more privileged classmates; data from 58 countries shows that more hot school days exacerbated learning gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students within and across countries.

This article was first published on the Harvard Center for International Development website. Read the full article here.