UNICEF report flags need to address children in climate planning
A NEW report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has drawn public attention to the apparent paucity of specific provisions for children concerning climaterelated issues, environmental degradation, and lack of access to clean energy.
The report, titled Climate Landscape Analysis for Children, comes as some 25 per cent of the island’s children live in poverty, making them more vulnerable to natural disasters and in the context of a world under stress from the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Combined with the unrelenting impacts of a changing climate, the situation makes for a perfect storm of bad outcomes for children in need and, in particular, those living in poverty, ‘barrel children’, children with disabilities, girls and teenage girls, children in state care, children living with HIV/AIDS, and unattached youth, including street children.
“Environmental hazards and pollution are major contributors to childhood deaths, illnesses and disability from acute respiratory disease, diarrhoeal diseases, physical injuries, poisonings, vector-borne diseases and perinatal infections. The physiology of children makes them more vulnerable than adults to certain health impacts caused by environmental degradation and climate change,”notes the UNICEF report.
“Also, during t he ti me of development and growth, children’s bodies are more affected by environmental health hazards. Children, in proportion, are more heavily exposed per unit of body weight to environmental toxins than adults,” it added.
“Children’s bodies are not always able to break down harmful contaminants that enter either through the respiratory or alimentary canals. Also, children’s health problems from environmental exposure can take years to develop, as they have more time to develop health conditions and diseases than adults who are exposed later in their life cycle,” the report said further.
At the same time, the report revealed that Jamaica has ratified and become party to a number of i nternational and regional conventions and protocols related to climate and environment, as well as children, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC.
“Notwithstanding these international commitments, of t he 22 national policies, strategies and plans assessed, less than 20 per cent explicitly reflected the linkages between climate, environment, energy and children. Indeed, many national environmental, energy and climate-related laws and policies globally have not adequately addressed the rights of children,” the report said.
“This may be because international agreements, up to about the mid- to late-2000s, did not adequately infuse a humanrights approach, including the rights of children, in these documents. Today, i ncluding human rights – if not specifically children’s rights – in environmental and climate instruments is more commonplace, which provides an opportunity for Jamaica to reflect on the coverage of children’s issues in these documents. Furthermore, there are over 20 government institutions with mandates related to either climate, environment, energy or children’s issues and there is now the opportunity to mobilise them around a common agenda,” it added.
Against this background, the report has recommended, among other things, incorporating children’s needs within all climate, environment and energy policies, programmes and plans, while placing their rights at the heart of climate and environmental policy.
It also recommended: • Increased collaboration among government agencies and between government and nongovernmental actors;
• Improved data collection and sharing on climate, environment, energy and children; and • Mobilisation of resources at the national level and from other innovative financing mechanisms that target initiatives related to climate, environment and energy and children.