Climate change is affecting child health across 130 countries

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Woman holding two children in a Laotian village
UNDRR/Sanjay Pariyar

Children are particularly vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change. Quantifying these negative effects and pinpointing areas where children are at greater risk can help inform evidence-based policymaking. New research by Shouro Dasgupta of CMCC and Elizabeth Robinson of LSE combines high-resolution climatic data with extensive health data from over a hundred countries to assess how climate affects child health and development.

Climate change negatively impacts human health in complex ways that vary over time and across regions, with both direct effects like increased mortality during heatwaves and indirect effects such as changes in the spread of infectious diseases. However, a recent scientific review indicates a lack of focus on how climate change specifically affects children’s health, with most studies concentrating on high-income countries.

A new paper, titled “Climate, weather, and child health: quantifying health co-benefits”, and published on Environmental Research Letters, addresses this gap by combining extensive multi-country child health data with high-resolution climate data to estimate the impacts of climate change on child health in lower and middle-income countries.

The paper offers a comprehensive study on the impacts of both climate and weather shocks on child health and development across 130 countries, exploring several infant and child health outcomes, including mortality, wasting, and stunting.

The study identifies a complex, non-linear relationship between temperature increases and child health outcomes. However, results show that both gradual temperature increases and acute climate shocks, such as droughts and heatwaves, negatively impact children’s health. “Both gradual and acute climate shocks worsen child health,” says CMCC’s researcher Shouro Dasgupta, first author of the study. “These impacts are projected to be higher in the future as temperature increases and as the frequency and intensity of extreme events increase.”

The research shows significant regional variation in the impacts of climate change on child health. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Chad, Kuwait, and Burkina Faso are projected to see the highest increases in child mortality in the medium term, while Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania face the greatest long-term risks.

The study highlights the significant health benefits for children of achieving low-emission scenarios, in line with the Paris Agreement. Policy-relevant projections indicate that adhering to these targets can greatly improve child health outcomes worldwide. These findings can guide local health policies by identifying areas at highest risk from climate change, emphasizing the substantial child health co-benefits of low-emission scenarios over high-emission ones.

Our paper highlights the clear health co-benefits that can be realized across the globe with greater efforts both to reduce emissions and adapt to the already changing climate,” says Elizabeth Robinson, director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, LSE, and another author of the study.

The innovative methodology combines sub-national level health data with high-resolution climatic data and allows the identification of regions where children are most at risk due to climate change. Importantly, this is the first study to quantify the health co-benefits of global climate mitigation efforts in the context of child health.

“As health of low- or middle-income country populations tend to be most harmed by climate change, the health co-benefits from more rapid emissions reductions are likely to be greatest in these countries,” says Dasgupta.

This study is crucial for policymakers worldwide. CMCC’s expertise in integrating socioeconomic issues with climate science, particularly in econometrics and data analysis, played a pivotal role in this research.

By providing detailed projections under various warming scenarios, it offers a valuable tool for designing targeted health policies. It also highlights the urgent need for poverty reduction and educational improvements to safeguard child health against the growing threat of climate change.

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