Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Primeros Pasos

IDB

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Early Education
    • Family and Children
    • Maternity
    • Measurement and Indicator
    • Nutrition and Lactation
    • Policies and Programs
    • Seminars and Courses
  • Authors
  • English
    • Spanish
    • Portuguese

Climate change and its impact on young children: there’s no time to lose

August 28, 2023 por Romina Tome - Alexandre Bagolle - Florencia Lopez Boo Leave a Comment


The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recently adopted General Comment 26 on children’s right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This comment emphasizes how climate change and environmental degradation jeopardize the rights of children in general. It calls for urgent action to protect those who are most vulnerable.

What is climate change and how does it affect children’s early years?

Climate change is the long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns that make extreme weather events and disasters more frequent and intense. As a recent IDB publication explains, the Latin America and the Caribbean region is the second most prone to natural disasters—like storms, hurricanes, or droughts—and poor households are particularly exposed to their consequences. This puts the region’s children in an especially vulnerable predicament.

Studies on Latin America and the Caribbean have documented how floods, tropical storms, and extreme temperatures impact pregnancies, negatively affect the health of newborns, and undermine nutrition and academic performance in early childhood. Other studies have demonstrated that early exposure to climate shocks has consequences for vocabulary acquisition and academic performance in contexts as disparate as Peru and India. At the global level, the World Health Organization has declared that 1.7 million children under age five die from environmental pollution each year.

These climate-related consequences for children are driven by several factors, like diminished household income, water or food scarcities, higher disease rates, or health services that are disrupted or used less. The climate crisis also puts children at risk of emotional and physical violence or being abandoned. This can happen in several ways: some children are separated from their families and left unprotected during natural disasters or the displacements they cause, while others face violence within their homes as stressful situations erode their caregivers’ self-control.

See our publication on social protection and climate change

Measures to protect our youngest from the impacts of climate change

In the wake of extreme climate events, it is often difficult to reach households to help families meet their children’s needs. These episodes can also cut off access to medical facilities or damage their infrastructure.

One way to prepare for this type of crisis is to design hybrid care protocols to use when in-person services are impossible. Ecuador, for example, uses the hybrid model it developed during the pandemic in emergency situations like natural disasters or conflicts. The country is currently preparing for the El Niño warming event, a phenomenon forecasted for the second half of 2023 that triggers powerful storms and floods, among other serious consequences.

In addition to contingency plans that ensure continued service during and after shocks, resilient infrastructure is also key when new centers are built to expand early childhood. Countries should perform climate risk analyses as part of their strategy for building out more centers, and adopt resilient construction standards. It is especially important to make sure that centers are adapted to higher temperatures, because evidence shows that exposure to heat can affect concentration and learning.

Countries also need to identify the geographical areas where families with vulnerable children live and where harmful climate events can occur, in order to plan cash transfers in advance to help them through the shocks and safeguard children’s well-being. To execute this strategy, countries need more evidence, along with maps and geo-localized data.

The pace of climate change is picking up, and so too should our efforts to protect children to ensure the quality of their childhood and future.


Filed Under: Policies and Programs Tagged With: climate change, early childhood, Early Childhood Development, IDB, Inter American Development Bank, Social Protection

Romina Tome

Romina Tomé is a Senior Associate in the Social Protection and Labor Markets Division at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she works on early childhood development projects. She was a researcher on international development issues at the American Institutes for Research. Romina holds a PhD in Public Policy (with a concentration in economics) from Duke University.

Alexandre Bagolle

Alexandre Bagolle es Especialista en la División de Protección Social y Mercados Laborales del BID. Brinda apoyo técnico para el fortalecimiento de los sistemas de protección social y de salud en los países de Latinoamérica y el Caribe, con especial énfasis en su transformación digital y resiliencia al cambio climático. Ha trabajado durante 11 años en varios paises de la región en la preparación, supervisión y evaluación de programas de desarrollo en distintos ámbitos del sector social como empleo, desarrollo de habilidades, salud y protección social. Alexandre cuenta con una maestría en Gobierno y Políticas Públicas de la Universidad de Sciences Po en Francia.

Florencia Lopez Boo

Florencia Lopez Boo is a Director, Global TIES; Economics and Applied Psychology at NYU. Prior to joining NYU, she was a Lead Economist at the Social Protection and Health Unit of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she led the Early Childhood Development (ECD) agenda, the IDB ECD Innovation Fund, the knowledge agenda of her unit, and an initiative on behavioral economics and social policies. She was a professor at the University of Louvain and worked at the World Bank and UNIDO. She has a PhD in Economics from Oxford University (Clarendon-Oxford University Press award). She is also a Young Lives Research Associate at the University of Oxford and the Institute for Labor Studies (IZA) in Bonn. Twitter: @florlopezboo

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

Search

Early Childhood Development

The first years of life are essential to establish the future foundation of a person´s productivity and wellbeing. In this blog, experts from the IDB and thought leaders in the topic, share information and international experiences related to early childhood development. Join us to talk about initiatives implemented in your country in this area

Similar Posts

    None Found

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

    Blog posts written by Bank employees:

    Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


    For blogs written by external parties:

    For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

    The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

    Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



    Privacy Policy

    Derechos de autor © 2025 · Magazine Pro en Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

    Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

    Aviso Legal

    Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

    facebook
    twitter
    youtube
    This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser.
    To learn more about cookies, click here
    X
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT