New Delhi: Climate change will damage the health of an entire generation of children, particularly in India, due to food shortage, infectious diseases, floods and deadly heat waves, unless there are immediate cuts to fossil fuel emissions, according to a major new report published in ‘The Lancet’ journal Thursday.
The ‘Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change’ is a comprehensive yearly analysis tracking progress across 41 key indicators.
If the world follows a business-as-usual pathway, with high carbon emissions and climate change continuing at the current rate, children born today will face a world that will be on average over four degrees Celsius warmer by their 71st birthday, threatening their health at every stage of their lives, the report noted.
The annual project is collaboration among 120 experts from 35 institutions, including the World Health Organisation and World Bank.
The authors noted that climate change is already damaging the health of the world’s children, and is set to shape the well-being of an entire generation unless the world meets Paris Agreement targets to limit warming well below two degrees Celsius.
Poornima Prabhakaran, co-author of the report, noted that few countries are likely to suffer from the health effects of climate change as much as India, with its huge population and high rates of healthcare inequality, poverty, and malnutrition.
“While the report highlights the effects of climate change on people of all age groups, here what we are trying to do is to bring the focus back on children, because there is a sense of urgency about the issue,” the professor at New Delhi’s Public Health Foundation of India told this agency Thursday. “For every child who is born today, the future will be decided by the changing climate,” she added.
Prabhakaran noted that in India, diarrhoeal infections, a major cause of child mortality, will spread into new areas, whilst deadly heat waves, similar to the one in 2015 that killed thousands of people in the country, could soon become the norm.
While the government has launched many initiatives and programmes to address a variety of diseases and risk factors over the past two decades, this report shows the public health gains achieved over the past 50 years could soon be reversed by the changing climate.
Nothing short of a 7.4 per cent year-on-year cut in fossil CO2 emissions from 2019 to 2050 will limit global warming to the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report stated.
“Children are specifically more vulnerable to the health risks of a changing climate. Their bodies and immune systems are still in a developing stage, leaving them more susceptible to disease, pollution and environmental pollutants,” Prabhakaran explained.
Nick Watts, executive director of The Lancet Countdown, added, “The damage done in early childhood is persistent and pervasive, with health consequences lasting for a lifetime. Without immediate action from all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, gains in wellbeing and life expectancy will be compromised, and climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation.
Infants and small children are among the worst affected by malnutrition and related health problems such as stunted growth, weak immune systems, and long-term developmental problems, say authors of the report.
Also, children will be particularly susceptible to infectious diseases such as dengue that rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will leave in their wake.
PTI
