Children will be Severely Impacted Due to Heat Waves by 2050: A Latest UNICEF Report Released

Heatwaves have become a serious threat to many countries. People of all age groups are severely impacted by these heatwaves, but new data indicates that by 2050 children will be affected more from this environmental change.

Today, half a portion of a billion young people are now presented to countless heatwaves, putting them on the front edges of environmental change, the UN agency noted. It is estimated that by the middle of this century, more than 2 billion children will face longer-lasting & frequent heat waves posing devastating impacts on their lives.

Why Children Are At a Greater Risk?

New data published by the UN agency reveals that young children face greater risks as compared to adults. This is all because children are not capable enough of regulating their body temperature compared to adults. Excessive exposure of heatwaves on children increases the risk of health problems namely asthma, chronic respiratory conditions, and cardiovascular diseases.

Thus, it has become essential to invest in building children’s resistance. It is the need of hour to adapt various systems on which children rely to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing climate.

Protecting Children is the Priority –

Protecting youngsters from the rising effects of heatwaves ought to be fundamentally important for all nations, UNICEF said, in a call for "urgent and dramatic emissions mitigation measures to contain global heating - and protect lives”.

Children in northern areas will confront the most sensational expansions in high heatwave severity, while by 2050, almost 50% of all children in Africa and Asia will confront sustained exposure to extreme high temperatures over 35C (95F), UN Children’s Fund data showed.

"This will devastatingly affect children," said Vanessa Nakate, environment activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. "The more successive, longer lasting and more extreme heat waves children are presented to, the more noteworthy the effects on wellbeing, nutrition, safety, education, access to water and future livelihoods."

Featuring the devastating effect of drought in the Horn of Africa after four bombed rainy seasons, Ms. Nakate demanded "lives are being lost from preventable causes on the grounds that the world is acting too leisurely on alleviation and not offering sufficient help for adaptation ".

Children "who are least liable for environmental change are bearing its greatest expenses", she kept, taking note of that in spite of the fact that Africa creates under four percent of worldwide global emissions, it suffers some “most brutal” impacts of the climate crisis.

“Almost every country is encountering changing heatwaves," UNICEF said. "What every government truly does now will decide the survival of those least responsible for this crisis – our children and young people.”

News Source : https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129852