Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) recently published a new position statement on the climate crisis ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (the 26th Conference of the Parties or COP26).1 The statement reminds us that children have the right to health, including healthcare and other fundamental economic and social rights. A child rights-based approach builds on a human rights approach but includes the specific needs of children. Furthermore, many international agreements, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement, affirm countries’ commitments to a human rights-based approach to development and climate action. Thus, the negative impacts of climate change on children trigger obligations among those responsible, for both mitigation and adaptation.2
The RCPCH position statement says:
All children have the right to clean air, safe water, sanitation, affordable and nutritious food, and shelter. Yet millions of children in the UK and globally do not have access to these critical health determinants—a situation that will be worsened by climate change.
Air pollution will impact almost all children in all parts of the world. Nearly all children in the world breathe poor quality air and, in 2016, 300 000 children aged less than 5 years died because of ambient air pollution, and a further 400 000 died as a result of household air pollution.1 Children breathe faster, so they inhale more airborne toxicants in proportion to their weight at a time when their organs are still forming. Exposure to air pollutants during pregnancy and childhood can have harmful and irreversible effects on the development of the lungs and other organs and …
Footnotes
Twitter @alison_firth, @HeadSmartFellow, @bernieaohare
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.