It’s often said that children are the future. But are we giving them a safe, clean and healthy one?
Today’s focus looks at a United Nations report that found that almost all of the world's children are exposed to at least one climate hazard, with as many as 1.8 billion put in danger by droughts and 1.2 billion by extreme heat.
Plus, the Ethical Corp Magazine showed that children are bearing the brunt of fracking health risks in the United States' push to “drill, baby, drill” as an oil company in Arlington, Texas, received permits to add nine new gas wells at two sites, as close as a third of a mile away from several primary and secondary schools.
The report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that children were "disproportionately affected" by a range of intensifying climate-related risks and governments urgently needed to invest in infrastructure, adaptation and disaster management capabilities to reduce their exposure.
"It's not just the exposure to the single hazards like floods or droughts or heat waves and extreme heat that children face, but it is the exposure to multiple hazards," said Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan, UNICEF statistics manager and one of the authors of the report.
As many as 662 million children were at risk from tropical storms, 337 million from riverine floods and 33 million from coastal floods, with 1 billion children also exposed to malaria, mostly in Africa.
In 2024, 242 million children in 85 countries saw their schooling disrupted by climate hazards.

-Reuters