51% of children in India facing ‘double threat of poverty and Climate Crisis: Study

NEW DELHI: According to a recent survey, 51 per cent of children in India are experiencing the negative impact of climate catastrophe along with poverty.

The report titled ‘Generation Hope: 2.4 billion reasons to end the global climate and inequality crisis’ states that there are about 350 million children in Asia who are suffering from both extreme poverty and climate calamity, including 222 million in India. The report which was prepared by the child rights NGO Save the Children and climate scientists from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, also states that Cambodia is the Asian nation most likely to experience this “double threat,” with 72 per cent of its children affected. Myanmar and Afghanistan are next, with 64 and 57 per cent of their children affected respectively.

Children in the higher income countries are also affected by the climate crisis. The study mentions that 121 million children who live in higher-income nations are also affected by poverty and the effects of climate change. More than 80 per cent of the afflicted children (12.3 million) reside in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Inequality issues and the climate crises are inextricably linked and cannot be addressed separately. According to Sudarshan Suchi, Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children in India, this relationship is quite clear in India. He said that the most vulnerable population of children need to be our focus especially in the upcoming COP27 and G20 summits in November, particularly as India gets ready to host the G20 summit the following year. The world’s richest countries need to shoulder this responsibility by way of unlocking trillions in financing for countries that are struggling to protect their children from its impacts, including through climate finance, particularly for adaptation and loss and damage. These countries’ historic emissions have driven both the climate and inequality crises.

Save the Children calculated the percentage of children affected by poverty and children affected by climate risk in 1,925 sub-national regions across 159 nations, accounting for 98 per cent of all children, to estimate the number of children living in poverty and at danger from the climate.

The term “Asia region” was used in the study to refer to a group of 24 nations with a combined population of 1.156 billion children. Twenty of these nations—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam—were examined, with a combined population of 1.146 billion children (99.1 per cent of all children in Asia).