The coldest year of the rest of their lives: Protecting children from the escalating impacts of heatwaves

This report provides yet more evidence that children are on the front lines of the climate crisis. It is a follow-up to the 2021 report, The climate crisis is a child rights crisis: Introducing the children’s climate risk index, which provided a picture of children’s exposure to and vulnerability to climate shocks and stresses, showing how climate and environmental shocks are undermining the full spectrum of child rights. Heatwaves are one clear example.

The findings of the report underscore the urgent need to adapt the services children rely on as unavoidable impacts of global heating unfold. It also makes a case for more substantial emissions reduction, to prevent the worst impacts of the other high heat measures. Millions more children will be exposed to high heatwave severity and extreme high temperatures depending on the degree of global heating reached. Children in northern regions will face the most dramatic increases in high heatwave severity while by 2050, nearly half of all children in Africa and Asia will face sustained exposure to extreme high temperatures.