Climate change is increasingly affecting the human rights to life, food, health, safe drinking water and sanitation, housing, self-determination, culture, work, and development, especially of those people already vulnerable and marginalised because of multiple factors linked to geography, gender, age, poverty, disability, and cultural or ethnic background. 1 Today's adolescents and youth (aged 10-24) account for 1.8 billion people, 24% of the global population, 2 and the larger proportion live in low and middle income countries facing extreme climate vulnerability. 3 Almost every person under 18 is exposed to at least one climate stress, including heatwaves, cyclones, air pollution, and flooding. 3 In addition to directly affecting their physical and mental health, climate hazards reduce young people's access to nutrition, education, employment, healthcare services, and a safe environment. 4 Current and future generations of young people will continue to suffer the greatest burden of climate change, despite historically contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions.
Alice McGushin and colleagues argue for recognition of the diverse ways in which climate change affects adolescent wellbeing and call for health professionals to work with them to respond to the crisis
With COP27 due to be held in November 2022, these young authors discuss why it must be more inclusive, with representation from the global south, and with young people engaged in a more meaningful way
Climate change is a multidimensional issue that affects all aspects of society, including public health and human rights. Climate change is already severely impacting people’s health and threatening people’s guaranteed fundamental rights, including those to life, health, self-determination, and education, among others. Across geographical regions, population groups and communities who are already marginalized due to age, gender, ethnicity, income, and other socioeconomic factors, are those who are disproportionately affected by climate impacts despite having contributed the least to global emissions. Although scholars have been calling for a human rights-based approach and a health perspective to climate action, the literature looking at this multidisciplinary intersection is still nascent, and governments have yet to implement such intersectoral policies. This commentary begins to reflect on the relationship between climate change, human rights, and public health from the perspective of young people engaged in climate action and discourse at the national and international levels. It presents a way forward on what we, as youth climate advocates and researchers, believe is a priority to bring intersectoral integration of human rights and public health approaches to climate change to fruition. First, scholars and practitioners should examine and support youth-led climate interventions that tackle human rights and public health violations incurred by the climate crisis. Second, participatory approaches to climate change must be designed by working synergistically with climate-vulnerable groups, including children and young people, practitioners and scholars in public health and human rights sectors to holistically address the social, health, and environmental impacts of the climate crisis and root causes of injustice. Finally, we recommend more holistic data collection to better inform evidence-based climate policies that operationalize human rights and public health co-benefits.
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