Youth - Agents of Change

Youth are especially vulnerable to climate change because of their lower immunity to disease, nutrition and other development requirements, and their vulnerability to abuse if orphaned or displaced from their parents due to climate change effects.

Health

 Climate change can lead to greater severity of malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria, and respiratory infections, which already plague many young children in the developing world. Climate change-induced events such as droughts and floods can lower agriculture yields, meaning less food for families. Children are particularly vulnerable to food scarcity given their nutrient requirements for healthy development. Malnutrition can make youth increasingly vulnerable to infectious diseases.

Warmer temperatures, a result of climate change, can lead to an increase in the number of parasites carrying these infectious diseases, which will impact children more severely than adults given their weaker immune systems. In developing countries that have weak infrastructure, such as poor public health, youth are less likely to receive adequate care to treat these illnesses.

Access to Education

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that storms will increase in severity and frequency if climate change continues. The damage from such storms can interfere with one of the most important aspects of youth development – school. The July 2007 floods in Sudan damaged nearly 200 schools, affecting close to 45,000 children.

Resource scarcity can also decrease school attendance. Droughts, deforestation, and warmer temperatures can limit water, wood, and food supplies such as fish. This may mean youth spend less time in school and more time helping their parents search for these resources. For example, warmer sea temperatures around Zaragoza Island, in the southern Philippines, have reduced the amount of fish available to hunt. As a result, some children have been forced to leave school in order to help their families.

 Safety

 While natural disasters are devastating for everyone, children are particularly vulnerable due to their small size and relative inability to care for themselves. Such disasters can displace children from their parents, leaving them vulnerable to opportunistic adults who may abuse them.

 Youth’s safety can also be comprised if resource scarcity or weather disasters force populations to migrate. Refugees, escaping from their communities due to conflict or to weather disasters, often face violence while in transit or while living in refugee camps. Studies show that women and children are particularly vulnerable to such violence due to their relative physical weakness in comparison to men. Therefore, the increased risk of storms and the threat warmer temperatures pose to vital resources should climate change continue, have the potential to create a major safety risk to the world’s youth. 

 Youth as Agents of Change

 While young people are often more vulnerable to climate change than adults, they are not merely victims. Youth have the ability to be agents of change, positively affecting their environment today to make for a better tomorrow.

 In Sierra Leone there is a volunteer program of 15,000 youth who are learning better farming practices. This program allows youth to learn and participate in their environment and help create healthy farming conditions for future crops.

 The Global Disaster Safety Map Project in Trinidad and Tobago is giving students the tools to learn about disaster management. Students in the program create maps of their communities and plan ways to achieve safety in case of a disaster such as a flood.

 These two examples show just some of the ways in which youth can get involved and affect change. As Mercy Corps’ Global Citizen Corps program advocates, awareness about climate change and the ways to help stop and adapt to its effects can lead to action which will have an important, positive impact on the future of our planet.