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Maverick Citizen, Our Burning Planet

How climate change will impact your lifespan: Part 2 (children and teens)

(Photo: everydayhealth.com / Wikipedia)

19 Sep 2024

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It’s having real-time impacts on our health. This is how we will be affected throughout our lifespan.

One of Kumi Naidoo’s most striking quotes sums up the climate crisis perfectly: “The good news is the planet will be just fine.

“Think about it – if we continue to stay with our addiction to fossil fuels, we’ll continue to warm up the planet to the point where we can’t grow food, we destroy our soil and water resources.”

Naidoo is the former secretary general of Amnesty International and the first person from the Global South to lead Greenpeace International.

Extinction Rebellion staged a protest at Kalk Bay harbour to support a ban on fossil fuel exploration in Antarctica. (Photo: Brenton Geach)

“So understand that trying to avert catastrophic climate change is nothing more and nothing less than protecting our children, and their children’s future,” said Naidoo.

It may sound, at worst, alarmist, or at best, unsettling – but it doesn’t stop it from being true.

It’s unequivocal that human activities are causing climate change (different from climate variability), making extreme climate events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall, and droughts more frequent and severe.

This is not the opinion of a few state-funded scientists but the assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where hundreds of credible scientists from around the world volunteered to review thousands of scientific papers.

Now, a recent collection of papers published in the Journal of Global Health has found that pregnant women, newborns, children, adolescents and older people are facing serious health complications due to climate change. However, despite these groups’ heightened risks, their specific needs have largely been overlooked in climate response efforts.

The collection, titled Climate Change Across the Life Course, was authored by experts from the World Health Organization and academics from around the world. It documented the available scientific evidence on the health impacts of different climate hazards at key life stages.

Read more: How climate change will impact your lifespan: Part 1 (maternity and newborns)

The second paper in the collection looks at how climate change poses a risk to the health of children and adolescents.

Physical health

Children are particularly susceptible to climate-related health issues because of their developing immune systems and greater need for nutrient-rich food and water.

Single sad teen holding a mobile phone lamenting sitting on the bed in her bedroom with a dark light in the background Pollution worsens issues like asthma in children. (Photo: iStock)

The paper found that climate change events, mainly through air pollution and wildfire exposure, are likely to worsen air quality, which can cause or exacerbate respiratory issues like asthma for children and teens, and reduce lung function.

Infectious diseases are another major concern. Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns can increase the risk of food- and water-borne illnesses, as well as vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever. Children are particularly vulnerable to these because their immune systems are still developing.

One study found that for every 1°C rise in temperature, the risk of bacterial infections like cholera and gastrointestinal diseases increases.

In terms of extreme weather events, scientists found that events such as floods and droughts disrupt access to safe drinking water, leaving children more exposed to water-borne illnesses like diarrhoea.

The review found that drought-affected families may resort to using unsafe water, which increases the risk of bacterial infections in children. Due to their smaller body size, children require more water per unit of body weight than adults, making them more vulnerable to contaminated sources.

children The risk of bacterial infections increases with rising temperatures. (Photo: EPA /Nic Bothma)

Malnutrition is one of the most serious climate-related impacts on this group. Studies provided a wealth of evidence that high temperatures and droughts are associated with food insecurity, reduced dietary diversity, stunting and being underweight. Evidence indicates that malnutrition is more prevalent in the weeks and months following extreme weather events, while stunting tends to be more common in the years afterwards.

One study, which used data from 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, found that hot and dry conditions are associated with reduced child weight.

Christopher Trisos, a senior researcher of the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town, noted that we already have food shortages in parts of South Africa, and that this will only get worse under a high carbon scenario.

Trisos, the coordinating lead author of the Africa chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report, said it’s projected that 1.7°C of global warming since pre-industrial levels (we’re at about 1.2°C now) could lead to reduced fish harvest in Africa from a warming ocean that could leave up to 70 million people exposed to iron deficiencies.

Mental health

Beyond physical health, the mental toll the climate crisis takes on young people is significant. The more frequent and intense extreme weather events – such as storms, floods and fires – that destroy homes and livelihoods, and exhaust overstretched health services, have increased the prevalence of mental health disorders in children and teens.

For example, one meta-analysis found that children who experienced injury, fear, or bereavement from an extreme weather disaster, and witnessed injury or death or had poor social support, were at greater risk of developing a mental health disorder.

HIV mental illness Studies show that people living with HIV are often at a higher risk for depression and anxiety, including a higher risk of suicide. Children are at greater risk of mental health disorders after experiencing extreme weather events. (Photo: everydayhealth.com / Wikipedia)

And a review of eight studies of children aged three to 18 years found that disaster exposure and a lack of social support were significant risk factors for developing PTSD.

Climate anxiety, also known as eco-anxiety, is another mental health challenge that has emerged among adolescents. As awareness of climate change increases, children are reporting feelings of fear, helplessness, and sadness about the future. Indigenous children, in particular, are affected as they witness the degradation of their cultural landscapes due to rising sea levels and other climate-induced changes.

Education

Climate change can distract and restrict access to children’s and teens’ education in many ways.

For example, the review found that “hot classrooms can be distracting and unmotivating, which can increase student absenteeism. Furthermore, heat can interfere with sleep quality, cognitive function and the ability to concentrate, reducing learning outcomes”.

The Africa chapter from the IPCC’s 6th assessment report found that climate change negatively affects the educational attainment of children.

For example, in West and Central Africa, lower-than-average rainfall in early childhood is linked to 1.8 fewer years of schooling, and in rural Zimbabwe, drought during early years results in fewer grades completed by adolescence, leading to a 14% drop in lifetime earnings.

“We know South Africa is vulnerable to climate change,” reflected Trisos.

“If large portions of our population suffer the impacts of climate change, it negatively impacts social stability and the economy – it impacts everyone.” DM

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