The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index

This report, released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on August 20, 2021, assesses children’s exposure and vulnerability to climate change and environmental hazards. It also introduces a framework – the Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) – that ranks countries based on levels of vulnerability to “environmental stresses and extreme weather events” faced by children there. Stating that children are more vulnerable to climate shocks and hazards than adults, the report highlights the need to frame the climate crisis as a crisis for children’s rights. It acknowledges the overlap of social, political and economic risks with climate and environmental ones and examines how millions of children live in areas experiencing multiple risks. The CCRI assesses 163 countries across 57 indicators. These fall under either ‘exposure to climate and environmental shocks and stresses’ (pillar 1) or ‘child vulnerability’ (pillar 2). The components examined under the first pillar include exposure to water scarcity, floods, tropical cyclones, vector borne diseases, heatwaves as well as air, soil and water pollution. Whereas those that fall under the second pillar are: child health and nutrition; education; water, sanitation and hygiene; and poverty, communication assets and social protection...