Recognising the rights of children in the climate change impacts: child climate risk index

Professor Craig Hutton led a UK-wide team to understand how climate change affects children. He worked closely with Duncan Hornby, also at GeoData, and partners at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling.

Together, they set out to answer a question that had been largely overlooked: how are children specifically affected by climate and environmental risks?

Children are more vulnerable than adults. Their bodies are still developing, and they rely on essential services such as healthcare, nutrition and education. Yet earlier climate risk studies treated children and adults the same.

Between 2017 and 2021, researchers at the University of Southampton worked to change this. They developed new ways to measure risk that reflect children’s lives and needs.Their work included:

• creating child-focused climate risk models that combine environmental, social and economic data
• mapping hazards such as flooding, drought, air pollution and heatwaves, and showing how these affect children’s health and wellbeing
• analysing access to essential services, including water, sanitation, healthcare and education, in vulnerable regions
• providing practical recommendations to support child-centred climate policy and action

Their work informed UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index, which was launched in 2021. The index assessed climate risk for more than 2.2 billion children worldwide and contributed to UNICEF’s work at COP26 in Glasgow.

The reports foreword was co-authored by Greta Thunberg, Farzana Faruk Jhumu, Eric Njuguna and Adriana Calderón, all members of the Fridays for Future movement.

Global impact

The CCRI has helped turn research into real-world change. Governments and organisations now use the data to shape policy, funding and programmes. For example:

• Bangladesh has used child-focused data in its Climate and Disaster Risk Atlas
• Nigeria has developed a national Climate Change Policy for Children, Youth and Women
• Plan International has strengthened disaster preparedness in schools in Vietnam and Cambodia
• Save the Children has used the data to advocate for child-focused climate funding
• the World Bank has supported investments in child-focused programmes

The index has also strengthened youth advocacy. Activists use the data to call for climate justice and hold decision-makers to account.

Global media coverage, including the BBC and The Guardian, has increased awareness of how many children are at extreme risk.

Putting children at the centre of climate policy

This research shows that children cannot be treated as small adults in climate policy. Their needs are different and must be understood and addressed.

Future research will continue to build on these findings, exploring how factors such as age, gender and disability shape children's experiences of climate risk.

The impact of the CCRI extends beyond the research itself. It has underpinned a number of policy developments and UNICEF-related activities in recent years, helping to ensure that children's specific needs are considered in climate action.