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Around 100 million of the estimated 120 million children born in 2020 face “unprecedented” exposure to extreme heat under the world’s current climate plans.

That’s according to a new report from international charity Save the Children, which shows the huge difference that keeping to the globally-agreed target of 1.5°C warming above pre-industrial levels could make.

Almost ten years after the Paris Agreement enshrined this goal, countries’ climate policies put us on track for 2.7°C heating. Since even these commitments aren’t being met, the world is currently on course for around 3.1°C of warming. 

“Across the world, children are forced to bear the brunt of a crisis they are not responsible for,” says Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International. “Dangerous heat that puts their health and learning at risk; cyclones that batter their homes and schools; creeping droughts that shrivel up crops and shrink what’s on their plates. 

“Amid this daily drumbeat of disasters, children plead with us not to switch off.” 

Released by the charity and researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) today, the report finds that meeting 1.5°C would reduce the number of today’s five-year-olds impacted by extreme heat to 62 million – a difference of 38 million. That’s almost a third of five-year-olds. 

How will global heating impact children?

Heatwaves disproportionately impact young children’s health, by increasing their risks of dehydration, respiratory illnesses, and ultimately mortality. 

Extreme heat also disrupts access to food and clean water and forces schools to close – as it did for a fortnight in South Sudan earlier this year, after some students collapsed at their desks.

Under current national climate policy pledges – which would see a 2.7°C temperature rise by 2100 – even adults born in 1960 will encounter unprecedented heatwave exposure during their lifetime in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia.

Children born in all regions of the world in 2020 face unprecedented exposure to heatwaves. 

Researchers defined “unprecedented” exposure as experiencing climate extremes that someone would have less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of experiencing during their life in a world without human-induced climate change. 

Meeting the 1.5°C target would protect millions of children born in 2020 from the severest impacts of other climate-related disasters too, including crop failures, floods, tropical cyclones, droughts and wildfires. 

What do children say about the climate crisis?

16-year-old Denise (not her real name) and her family were forced from their home in Brazil last year when the country’s worst floods in 80 years struck, devastating their community. 

Their home, including Denise’s bedroom, was severely damaged, and she was out of school for nearly two months.  

“It really affected me mentally, and academically too,” Denise says. “Catching up on all my grades to pass secondary school was really tough, especially at a state school. It massively impacted my schoolwork. My grades dropped significantly after the floods.” 

Inevitably, it is children affected by inequality and those in lower- and middle-income countries who are worst affected by climate extremes. Their families are less able to cope with climate shocks, and they are already at greater risk from vector and waterborne diseases, hunger and malnutrition. 

Haruka, also 16, is from Vanuatu, which recently experienced three of the most severe types of cyclone in just a year.

“Cyclones are scary. For me, they continue to destroy my home, every year – we don’t even bother trying to fix the ceiling anymore,” she says.  

“The past few years, I’ve seen ceaseless destruction and constant rebuilding. This seemingly never-ending cycle has become our reality, and most people aren’t even aware that it’s not just nature doing its thing, but it’s us bearing the brunt of a crisis that we did not cause.”   

Around five million children born in 2020 would be spared unprecedented lifetime exposure to tropical cyclones, the report finds, if the world manages to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C rather than 2.7°C.

A similar number would avoid unprecedented lifetime exposure to river floods.

How can policy-makers put children at the heart of climate action?

“This new research shows there is still hope, but only if we act urgently and ambitiously to rapidly limit warming temperatures to 1.5°C, and truly put children front and centre of our response to climate change at every level,” says Ingersen.

Fundamentally, the charity is calling for the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, with high-income and historically high-emitting countries leading the way. 

It also wants to see a gear-change in the provision of adaptation and loss and damage funding, with new climate finance that prioritises child-critical services – such as health and nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education, child protection, and social protection.

Children must be centred in international climate plans, Save the Children adds, including in new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) which were due to be submitted this year.