Deforestation
Children want to experience their right to grow up and live in a healthy environment.
Across the world, children are affected by environmental issues and the consequences of climate change. These issues and impacts can be very different for children – not everyone is affected equally. Some of the most common issues children told us they are impacted by, and worried about, include:
Waste management
Pollution of air and water
Extreme weather events including flooding, heat waves, cyclones, droughts
Biodiversity loss
Children also shared that they are worried about what such issues will mean for their future, the lives of future generations, for nature and the health of the planet.
“Our climate and environment play a very important role in our lives. I want people to understand that the change of climate does not only affect our lives, but our future generations’ too. If you stand up together, and put in the effort to make a change, then the environment will thank you. It promises you the freshest air and the purest water, the tallest mountains and the freshest trees, then we must also show our responsibility and promise the restoration of the environment. If we put the effort into it, we can do it. Anything is possible.”
(Girl, 13, India)
Children described the ways environmental issues and climate change negatively affect their daily lives, and the lives of their families, friends and communities:
Deforestation
Waste management
Pollution of air and water
Extreme weather events including flooding, heat waves, cyclones, droughts
Biodiversity loss
Children highlight that in such situations, many children are often unsafe and at greater risk of violence. For girls specifically, there are also greater risks of early marriage and early pregnancy.
“Let the government put climate change as its priority because as of recent days the northern parts of Nigeria have experienced flooding which makes a lot of families homeless, children are forced to live in camps, schools were also closed because of the flooding, [and] the health of children and the general community is affected so we need to act on this global problem.”
(Boy, Nigeria)
“Climate change has played a consequential role in my life. Previously due to heat stroke, there was an orange alert in Delhi, and some of the schools were closed. The impact that climate change has on our life cannot be foreseen.”
(Girl, 13, India)
“Whenever cyclones come to our island, we have to leave our houses and stay in a building. There’s no proper toilet facilities, no running water and drinking water available. We stop going to school as, at that time, the school also gets completely damaged and water comes inside the school, which takes months to recover”
(a child participating in a workshop in India)
“Every time I go with my father and mother through the river, I see many rivers are blocked and dirty with garbage as well as on the streets. I want to see rivers and roads clean of garbage.”
(Girl, 13, Indonesia)
“Not everyone is affected equally. It is due to colonialism, natural disasters, and drought. There are 10 earthquakes in Chile, nothing happens. However, there are 7 earthquakes in Turkey and everything collapses. In Somalia, people struggle to find water.”
(Child participating in a workshop in Turkey)
“People living in rural areas are suffering from shortage of rainfall and dry land which leads to drought and food shortage.”
(Girl, 13 years old, Ethiopia)
