Source: UNICEF Aotearoa NZ
The future of childhood hangs in the balance for millions of children if urgent action is not taken now to safeguard their rights in a changing world, UNICEF warned in its flagship report released this week to mark World Children’s Day.
Climate is of particular importance, with 2023 already being the hottest year on record. According to the report, in the decade of 2050-2059, climate and environmental crises are expected to be significantly more widespread, with eight times as many children exposed to extreme heatwaves, three times as many exposed to extreme river floods, and nearly twice as many exposed to extreme wildfires, compared to the 2000s. These issues ring true for Aotearoa, which has already seen increased extreme weather events, including Cyclone Gabrielle, which devastated parts of the North Island in 2023.
How these climate hazards impact children will be determined by their age, health, socioeconomic setting, and access to resources. For example, a child with access to climate-resilient shelter, cooling infrastructure, health care, education, and clean water has a greater chance of surviving climatic shocks compared to a child without access.
Child poverty in New Zealand is a potential driver for disparity, with Māori and Pasifika children experiencing greater inequity and potentially greater influence from climate crises. In the Pacific, children live in some of the hardest-to-reach communities in the world and are already facing unique challenges like limited access to clean water, sanitation and health care, and extreme vulnerability to climate disasters.
The report underscores the urgent need for targeted environmental action to protect all children and mitigate the risks they face.
Meanwhile, the report also acknowledges that frontier technologies – like Artificial Intelligence (AI) – offer both promise and peril for children, who are already interacting with AI embedded in apps, toys, virtual assistants, games, and learning software. But the digital divide remains stark. In 2024, over 95 per cent of people in high-income countries are connected to the internet, compared to nearly 26 per cent in low-income countries.
However, the report contains some good news. Life expectancy at birth is projected to increase. Gains in children’s access to education over the last 100 years are also projected to continue, with nearly 96 per cent of children globally expected to have at least a primary education in the 2050s, up from 80 per cent in the 2000s. Likewise, with increased investment in education and public health, and more stringent environmental protection, outcomes for children could improve significantly. For example, the gender gap in educational attainment would narrow, and exposure to environmental hazards would be reduced. The State of the World’s Children 2024 underscores the importance of centering child rights, as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in all strategies, policies, and actions. It calls for meeting the challenges and opportunities posed by the three megatrends by:
- Investing in education, services, and sustainable and resilient cities for children.
- Expanding climate resilience in infrastructure, technology, essential services and social support systems.
- Delivering connectivity and safe technology design for all children.
This year, World Children’s Day – UNICEF’s annual day of action for children, was commemorated under the theme, “Listen to the Future”. UNICEF Aotearoa hosted a special event at Parliament, where politicians from across parties faced a grilling on children’s rights from young people and youth advocates, as well as video questions from tamariki around the country. The Parliamentary Forum was themed around the topics of reducing inequality and discrimination – key themes that will shape the kind of future that children can expect.
Drawing on the megatrends and many other socioeconomic indicators, UNICEF commissioned the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital to analyse scenarios modeling how the world might look for children in 2050. The scenarios are possible outcomes, not predictions.
Climate extremities: The analysis establishes a threshold beyond which a climate event – such as a heatwave or river flood – is categorized as “extreme”. For instance, a river flood is considered extreme if its water levels exceed levels that were reached once every 100 years during the preindustrial era. The thresholds derive from scientific literature.
