Climate Change Exposes Children to Extreme Poverty

A report by the National Council for Children’s Services (NCCS) says that children in drought and famine ravaged districts are suffering from malnutrition and diseases complicated by hunger than ever before. Slightly more than half of Kenya’s population of nearly 35 million people is below 18 years.

The NCCS report identifies illnesses such as diarrhea, anemia, skin and respiratory complications as some of the ailments affecting children. Turkana, with a malnutrition rate of between 85 and 93 percent, is the worst affected. Conducted in districts worst affected by hunger, the assessment also reveals that school enrolment in most districts has dropped dramatically due to famine with early childhood centers and primary schools recording the highest dropout rates.

Kenya is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), adopted by the United Nations in 1989. The Articles of the Convention as well as the Guiding Principles aim to ensure child survival and development. Kenya is also a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It is against this background that the Day of the African Child marked on 15 June, 2009, made appeal to African countries to tackle issues affecting children. Dubbed the UN Millennium Campaign, African states, civil society organizations and the private sector were all challenged to tackle child and maternal mortality, school dropout, gender inequality and poor standards in schools with utmost urgency.

The Millennium Development Goals are an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving the lives that world leaders agreed on at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. The second Goal of Achieving Universal Primary Education, for example, has a target to ensure that all boys and girls complete primary education. The fourth Goal of Reducing Child Mortality has a target to reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under five.

Given such humane and noble aspirations, it should be a source of great concern for every man and woman that 50,000 children in Africa risk loosing their lives before they reach the age of five while a staggering 38 million others of school-going age are still out of school. It is in this context that concerns about the possible negative economic and social consequences of response measure to climate change were recently raised in the just ended climate change talks held in Bonn.

The suffering of the innocent, especially women and children, is a pain to most souls. To paraphrase a Burmese man, Sai Kur Sang, we do not want our children to suffer like us; we want them to survive and have better lives. There is growing global awareness about the impacts of climate change but very little action. As a health issue, for example, the impacts of climate change are not going just to be felt in some distant future, but are affecting our lives and those of our children here and now. Those most at risk are the climate-cum-political refugees like the children in Shalom City, a refugee camp for tens of thousands in Kenya.

Some positive and encouraging steps in the right direction are already being undertaken. Not too long ago, through the initiative of a number of institutions and NGOs, Nepalese women and children had an opportunity to use filmmaking to research the impacts of climate to their communities and create videos to campaign for what would most help them to adapt to climate change (Tamara Plush, 2009). These and similar kinds of initiatives should and must be supported both in words as well as in deeds if they are to make significant difference to the affected communities.

The Earthchild Institute recently launched a very innovative programme dedicated to children and the environment. We would like to recognize what they are doing and urge the rest of us, each one of us, to give serious thought at what our individual actions may mean to this and future generations. As Mahatma Gandhi once said "if we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with children". Similarly, a renowned pediatrician, Prof Anthony Costello, recently cautioned in a report published in the Guardian that if we do not act conscientiously, "we are setting up a world for our children and grandchildren that may be extremely turbulent".