Last month’s FairPlay and Food for Mzansi webinar focused on how social and economic conditions threaten food security, particularly for low-income households. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has highlighted another factor: climate change.
A UNICEF report says the impacts of climate change will put almost every child in the world at risk, and that approximately 1 billion children are at “extremely high risk” of impacts such as high temperatures, flooding and drought.
“Climate and environmental hazards are having devastating impacts on the well-being of children,” it says.
“These children experience multiple climate shocks, combined with poor essential services such as water, sanitation and healthcare. As climate change disrupts the environment, children are being forced to grow up in an increasingly dangerous world.
“This is a crisis that threatens their health, nutrition, education, development, survival and future”.
A related report ranks much of Africa as being at extremely high or high risk of climate change impacts. South Africa is classed as medium-high.
